by Peter Manus
I shrug. “I care nothing about the chess. And whether you follow me about adding your foolish touches to my crimes means nothing to me.”
“Your botched crimes,” he calls through a wind gust. “I complete you, darling.”
“My ears are deaf to your claims.”
He shakes his head as if marveling. “So inimitably cool, you are. And that deadpan sexuality, no matter where, no matter what. You know, if we spend much more time together, I really may start to believe that you are Jeanne Moreau.”
We don’t speak for a while. It starts to rain, softly, and then it abates. I watch the drops as they cease pattering upon the soft black swells. After that I go into a trance of sorts, not quite sleeping, but numb to the world. I cannot say how long this lasts.
“Look out there, my sweet,” he says eventually. “The little dark mass off the bow is Muskeget. Off that way is Tuckernuck, and then we’re home. Of course, we’ll need to circle round, so sit tight—the cuts are tricky. Can’t wait until you see The Old Lady, though. I can tell you’re a woman who appreciates a place for its bones.”
I sit watching as the dark island creeps along the horizon. The sails snap and rattle, and the hull groans gently as Brewster turns us into the current. I can hear, off somewhere, a steady thump, immersed within the wind, as if someone beats a tom-tom against the sky. A helicopter, I think. Surreptitiously, I finger the tiny purse in my lap, where it sits amid the frozen velvet of my dress.
Later, we walk along the beach in the driving rain from where he has anchored the sailboat. Behind us somewhere in the dark sits his little rubber dinghy with its hollow metal paddles. He enjoys the drenching surf. He enjoys the dead expanse of beach, the wind and the crackle of dismembered crabs beneath our feet. The sand is hard as stone, but I stop to remove my heels and allow the bits of crust and claw to pinch and pierce my soles.
“Nature is a cruel parent,” he says. “She beats at us out of spite.”
The cliff rises two hundred feet or more from beach to crest, where I can discern blowing reeds and the tops of wind-whipped trees and the occasional peak of a shingled roof against the night sky. Thunder rumbles and rain ripples in the gusts. This is a strange place.
“Come, my sweet,” Brewster bellows, cupping his hand to his mouth. “These are the final remaining cliff steps, just beyond the sandbags.”
The rough wooden stairs up are precarious at best. He recommends against relying on the handrail, and so we feel our way with feet only, eyes closed against the wind. The steps number in the hundreds. I am calm inside. I am as patient about nearing my goal as he is exhilarated to be nearing his. He reaches the top and turns to offer a hand and assist me up the final stairs. They say breeding is innate and I suppose they may be right. I feel safer, touching his bare hand with my glove, than I would if we had gone skin against skin. I do not want a vision of how he plans to kill me. I want my mind clear of him.
We rise above the cliff’s edge behind a tidy cottage that’s shuttered for the season. It sits far back from the cliff’s edge, with plenty of foliage between it and us. We walk across the kempt grasses toward the snarl of scrub bushes that divide us from the next property, and proceed this way, lawn after lawn, for some little while. The expanse of grass diminishes from house to house, and likewise the foliage become increasingly spare and rough. Finally, we duck under the limbs of a heavily gnarled scrub pine, and Brewster catches my arm to make sure I do not step too far to the right. I look down and see the steep, naked cliff beside me.
He then leans into the wind, waving over his shoulder for me to follow. I clutch my shawl to my neck as we cross the unruly patch of land yet intact behind the Van Ness place. The house looms, only twenty yards from the cliff’s edge. Just down from where we ducked through the bushes a wooden outbuilding, perhaps a shed or an old workshop, hangs partially off the edge of the cliff, its back end broken and jagged, its front intact but for a few sagging shingles. The shed door shudders and flaps and occasionally bangs closed, then shudders and flaps again.
“The Old Lady,” Brewster bellows, gesturing a welcome as he backs across the whipping saw grass toward the porch. “Watch out for the trench.”
The house is black from the rain, but I can see from the drier part under the porch roof that it is a battered grey cedar shingled structure, its fanciful trim once painted a yellowy shade of green. It appears to be Victorian in style, or Gothic—perhaps a daring entwining of the two—with tall narrow windows and numerous gables from which heavily decorated dormers steeple against the approaching dawn sky. Several pieces of heavy digging equipment sit on the landward side of the place, still as resting beasts, and from the mounds of soil and sand peppered with wind-flattened tufts of grass, it appears that workers have been excavating the earth from around the foundation.
Brewster leads me onto the porch, then uses a shoulder to wrench one of the French doors open. “Après vous, Madamoiselle,” he says to me.
I step past him and into the house.
THIRTY-FOUR
Marina Papanikitas’s Personal Journal
Pretty drained all around, Zoey. Arrived on the island about an hour before dawn, just as the big drops start to splash down. This was my first helicopter ride, and although it was pretty smooth and quick, I was real content to be touching rock again. We’re on the hospital grounds, like right out front on the lawn in a little square of amber footlights, and as I duck and run I can see the sedan with its blue lights pulsing, rolling toward the pad. Harry’s pilot friend hustles off toward the hospital with a couple of orderlies, and we go for the squad car. Harry bundles me in the back, then slams the front passenger door behind himself just in time for the rain to start coming down heavy duty. I watch it hit the parking lot with a rush that sends out a shuddering hiss.
“Did we miss Nantucket and wake up in the tropics?” Harry says.
Guy behind the wheel twists round as best he can—he’s a big fellow—and smiles as he offers a hand. “We can call it a nor’easter around these parts, but it’s the same damned thing,” he says. “I’m Granger Hill, Chief of Police.” He’s about fifty, African-American, soft-spoken.
“Look at that, Pop—picked up by the man himself.”
“You think I’m not going to be in the middle of this shit?” he laughs. There’s a tiny photo of a happy-looking white woman and two tiny brown-skinned boys taped to the center of the steering wheel, and he notices me eyeing it. “That’s my on-the-job cue card,” he says. “Keeps me from doing things any more stupid than necessary.”
I nod. “I’m sure it works.”
“Like to think it does,” he assures me.
He turns the car and starts wheeling down the hospital drive. “So am I heading to headquarters where we can talk about this with some of my guys, or are we in more of a hurry than that? Van Ness place is out on the east end of the island, and we’re about in the middle now. Talking nine miles. No such thing as traffic here this time of year, so it’ll take us ten minutes.”
Harry looks at me. “Pop, got a sense of timing?”
I feel myself blush, reminded of what we’re relying on as our basis for being here. “We want to be there while it’s dark and the rain’s still coming down,” I say. “Better head straight out. If we’re early, we’ll sit tight. After we talk, you can call your guys and explain what kind of back-up we’re looking for.”
“Can do.” Granger doesn’t seem at all puzzled by my answer—kind of weird to be with two men who come off as utterly down to earth but apparently have no problem with the idea of operating off of someone’s psychic vision. He turns out of the hospital lot into a rain-swept roadway lined with ragged masses of stunted, pale-leaved trees. The sandy soil merges with the blacktop, giving the whole place a soft, wild feel. “What are we looking to find?” he asks.
Harry gives me a glance over the back of the seat, deferring.
“Look, I don’t know how tight you are with the Van Ness clan,” I say, “but we may have a s
ituation on our hands with Brewster—that’s the former Bruno Myeroff.”
He absorbs this. “Yolanda seemed like a nice enough lady, few times I met her,” he says. “But from what I hear, I’m not sure she was up to dealing with that son of hers. Don’t think there’d be many old timers around here who’d be surprised to learn that the boy grew up to have some mighty serious issues. Father was considered a feisty one. Couple of famous stories, not the least of which was his refusal to touch the Van Ness place after his son got himself in trouble one too many times. Understand that most of what I could tell you, I myself came by second-hand. Been Chief out here coming on five years.”
“The permanent newcomer,” Harry remarks.
“That’s the stuff,” the Chief agrees. “Island’s always a unique kind of community.”
I resume, encouraged. “Our suspicion is that Brewster may be heading for the ’Sconset house with a hostage. He may have murdered one or more people back in Boston. Most recent vic died last night on a sidewalk in Cambridge. Vic before him was Brewster’s own assistant, and that one, we think, was just to throw us.”
“Am I to understand that my old friend Wilkie Morley is among the victims?”
“There’s a possibility that Morley’s death is part of this, yes,” I admit.
“Who’s the hostage? Anyone we know?”
“The woman we suspect that Brewster has with him is Agnès Rossignol. She may also have been involved in one or more of the deaths, so it’s probably safest for us to presume that they’re both armed and dangerous, but not working in collaboration.”
“Armed with what?”
I sigh. “We know very little. A witness said that the woman was armed with a pistol. And the last man that one or the other may have killed appears to have been shot with a crossbow.”
He glances sideways to see if I’m kidding. Then he chuckles. “My, my, my,” he says.
’Sconset, turns out, is a swank little colony set up in isolation out on the eastern tip of the island. Drive out there is about seven miles of straight, brush-lined macadam, and you barely see a light the whole way. Then suddenly you’re slowing to twenty and watching the sweet fences and lawns go by as the pillared summer mansions peek at you from between the rows of fat maples. All of the houses are dark, as is the tiny post office. The shingled village-style grocery stop is boarded for the season, and no cars line the tiny roundabout marking the community’s center. The rain has abated a bit, and dawn shows signs of drifting in, so we can see up a few lanes. A bunch of tiny, trellis-covered fishing shacks seem battened down. Remind me, Zoey, when I finally get around to writing that slasher screenplay we like to joke about—I need to set it in ’Sconset in the off-season. We’re talking spooky oo-key.
“Let’s take the ocean view,” says Granger. He punches out his lights, and we coast down a long sandy road in the dark. Ahead is the beach—even on a night like this I can easily make out the breakers, throwing their weight against the grey sand. Granger turns the car, and we travel parallel to the beach for a while. There’s a smattering of cottages down here below the main village. One and all are dark.
He stops the car and heaves himself out. Harry and I join him. Guy is about six foot four, turns out. Makes even Harry look kind of grounded. As if to emphasize it, Granger hoists himself up onto the cement seawall that sits between the dunes and the road. He stretches himself up tall and peers through some massive-looking binoculars. Harry and I stand below in the wind, watching him. Bunch of icy sand suddenly smacks me in the eye. “Son of a fucking bitch,” I mutter.
“Night goggles?” Harry calls up to Granger, ignoring me.
“Oh yeah,” he assures us. His quiet voice disappears practically as it comes out of his mouth. “We got us a sailboat,” I think I hear him saying. “Take a look?”
Harry goes to climb up, then thinks better and laces his fingers together. “Use a boost?”
I go to stick my foot on his hands, and he takes a moment to wink in my face. “The old premmie comes through, eh, Pop?” he says, just for me to hear. “Not that I had doubts, but…” He blows his cheeks out in relief.
I lean on his shoulder, preparing to hoist myself up to the sea wall. “Plenty of space for doubting this shit,” I assure him. “Trust me.”
Up next to Granger, I teeter around, reluctant to grab onto him. Fortunately he’s less reserved, and he grips the shoulder of my trench with his fist and yanks me over so I’m leaning against him. The dunes are just below us in front, although the drop back to where Harry stands is five feet. Somehow it lends me a sense of balance to have sand grasses blowing against my ankles, so soon I get my legs and can take the binoculars Granger offers. I train them down the beach and out over the water to where he’s pointing.
Amazing what they’ve done with night goggles. I’ve sampled the green glow type that make everything look all sci fi. These deluxe babies Granger is sporting give you more of a real life day glow around your subject. Still got the tint, but just barely. I find myself gazing down a long, wildly desolate stretch of beach. Lots of grassy patches, and even some gnarly growths that might be tree-like when they’re not underwater. The cliff starts gradually, with lots of tough looking viney vegetation holding together a gentle slope. Dark houses nestle at the top, chimneys poking skyward. Further away, the situation changes radically. The vegetation patches disappear and the cliff becomes a vertical wall of sand that dwarfs any bits of grass or tree that dare to crouch at base or zenith. Several houses, probably lofty structures from another angle, seem to cringe away from the edge, dark because they dare not peek at the fate that seems pretty damned inevitable—strangely, it’s the fact that these cliffs are pure sand, and so must erode, that gives them their terrible aura of power.
Granger guides me a little by moving my shoulder, and I look out over the water more. The waves are small and choppy and seem to move with no flow or pattern. Out there looking very small is a boat—probably a forty-footer with a mast up around forty-five feet from the water. The hull is white, undoubtedly fiberglass, and the trim and interior seem to be covered in wood siding. Definitely a schooner. No sign of life aboard. No way of telling how long the thing had been there, although how long could a lone boat hang out off the coast of the island without someone taking note? Just before I move the glasses along, I catch a glimpse of the name painted on the hull: starts with a “J.” As in Jane Guy. We’re on.
I play the glasses back over the water, the beach, up the cliff. The rain begins coming down in earnest. Granger pokes me to signal that he’s going, then jumps down behind me. I go to follow, but just before I lower the glasses, I hear this voice. Seems distant, exactly like it’s someone yelling at me through a heavy wind, but I don’t know, Zoey; I mean, it might have just been in my head.
She calls out “Vous me donnez la force pour continuer.”
I jump down a lot more nimbly than I would have if I’d been thinking, and race for the car. Hop in and slam the door hard. The guys are just settling in the front. They turn at the amount of bang I make. Both of them give me a bit of a study, each in his own way. I busy myself hiding my face by running my hands through my hair, spraying water about.
“Eerie night, all around,” says Granger kind of carefully.
“Damned straight,” I reply. In spite of all efforts, my voice comes out about a half-octave above normal range.
“Ready to head up there?” he says.
“Ready, Chief,” I say perkily. “Good to know they’ll be there.”
“That’s affirmative,” agrees Harry.
I just nod, finished trying to talk for the moment. Granger hesitates as if he wants to say something, then thinks better of it and starts the car.
THIRTY-FIVE
I am Nightingale—
“Cigarette?”
“I will.”
I take the cigarette with my wet gloved hand and allow him to ignite it, then sit back. He has lit a few candles and placed them about the room strategicall
y, so as to avoid the occasional gusts that sweep down the stairwell from a broken upstairs window. The house is only semi-furnished as workmen prepare for its relocation, but Brewster acts pleased to find that they have heeded his instructions to refrain from touching the living room and, he reports, a small first floor bedroom, so that he may spend the occasional night here as the time draws near. Thus, the scene is quite strange, with the lovely threadbare rug and worn silk-covered settee and matching armchairs, along with a delicate table or two and a rather massive glass-fronted sideboard, surrounded by dusty floors covered in brown paper, boarded windows and dangling wall fixtures. He taps his cigarette ash like a 1940s swell, explaining all this.
Brewster has offered me a towel to dry myself and has used another for himself. Both of us have limited our ministrations to our faces and hair, and neither seems bothered in the least to be sitting in the chilly room clad in our sopping clothes. Brewster comes through from the bedroom, which appears to be beyond a dark kitchen, carrying a dusty bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He seems quite cheery about this find, and pours liberal drinks for both of us. I touch mine to my lips as a gesture, familiar as I am with poison, then place it aside. We smoke in silence for a while, rather companionably, considering the circumstances. He drinks liberally, perhaps to prove that the stuff is not laced. But one cannot be overly cautious.
“Now, you do understand that I’ve brought you here to kill you?” he says in a civil tone.
“This is clear to me, of course,” I reply.
“Yes, well, nothing personal, but it’s quite a decent little set-up you’ve provided for me. Once the police finally figured out you were after me and you made your move to get me alone in the warehouse, I staged my phony attack in which you did this.” He points to his facial wound. “Now you’ll have followed me here to finish the job, determined little viper that you are. I’ll overpower you. You’ll die. Poof! All the murders solved.”