by John Farrow
“In the margins,” Cinq-Mars points out, “the preacher reminds himself to wait for a few chuckles to die down before proceeding. Then he continues, ‘In the meantime, I pray for you, my dear congregation, to be safe upon the sea and safer still upon the waters of life, and I pray for you to be loving and caring, for nothing good ever arrives from a contrary direction. That alone makes me ask if God is not on one side, evil on another, but I’m having none of it. As your pastor, I can only say that my nonbelief may disturb us all, but out there in the universe, I sense indifference. And that is the crux—there’s a word for you, with embedded meaning—the crux of the matter.’”
While listening, Louwagie wandered somewhat aimlessly around the room, idly glancing at objects and artifacts from the man’s life. He manages his first faint smile as Émile concludes the completed portion of the sermon. “They say he’s been packing them in lately. I don’t attend his church, but some who go to mine have slipped off to hear him talk. Kind of ironic that talking about losing one’s faith from a pulpit puts more people in the pews.”
“Curiosity for some,” Cinq-Mars acknowledges. “You can always draw people out for a crash. For others, perhaps they relate.”
They carry on through the rooms without conversing, Louwagie assessing the other man. Émile asks him about dulse, which he’s coming across in various packaging in the house, as chips, as flakes, as a powder, and in a sundried form.
“What does this stuff taste like anyway?” Émile asks.
“Try it. You probably won’t like it.”
“Really?”
“An acquired taste.”
Émile nibbles on a chip.
“So?” Louwagie asks him. “What does it taste like?”
He thinks it over, nibbles some more, and concludes, “Iron.”
“Loaded with the stuff.”
“Rusty iron,” Cinq-Mars adds. “You’re right. I don’t like it.”
When they return to the front door to leave, the younger man sums up, “I guess we got nothing here.”
“Not true,” Émile contradicts him.
“How so?”
“I’ve discovered that Lescavage was popular through delivering an unpopular point of view. He made fun of the meditating flyboys and girls. He lived an uncomplicated life, yet he was a curious fellow and a thinker. He was clearly modest when it came to material possessions, always a good sign for a man of the cloth. And one more thing that a good detective might bring forward as raw evidence.”
“What’s that?”
“That,” Émile says, and points.
Louwagie takes a look, then steps across the vestibule and lifts up a pair of rain pants tossed into a corner of the entry closet.
“The water stains on the floor look fresh enough,” Cinq-Mars explains. “Most likely, he went out in the storm wearing rain pants. To go over to Orrock’s place, perhaps? Then he came home and tossed them. But when he departed again, he left them behind. What does that tell you?”
The Mountie does find this curious.
“It was still raining. It poured the whole night through,” Louwagie recalls.
“First, it tells us that he came home. Then he left and did not expect to go far, so he dispensed with the rain pants. Nothing nearby is all that nearby, so if he was going back out into the rain, it was to go no farther than a car. His car—I presume the Jetta outside is his—is still here, so he was being picked up. Someone he knew, a friend perhaps, took him away and he ended up rather dead.”
“In slices,” Louwagie adds. He feels a change in himself, a charge, a movement away from depression and a budding excitement coming on. He speaks quietly, but nonetheless remarks, “Interesting.”
Progress. Émile catches the return of a smidgen of the man’s life force.
“Now let’s find a place to study those pictures,” Émile suggests.
“Don’t say us,” Louwagie reminds him. “Whatever you do, keep them out of my sight.”
NINETEEN
The day’s been long, and Émile feels a comfortable fatigue wash over him on the precipice of evening. Or is it the alcohol? Drinks with Sandra take an edge off, and they dine out in Whale Cove, a short jaunt from home, enjoying a meal worthy of a fine restaurant in any world capital. Out of respect for where they are, both opt for the halibut, and following a shore walk afterward they return to their cabin arm in arm. The gulls salute, rather than serenade, their stroll.
Émile decides to go up to the Whistle to check the place out.
“I want names,” Sandra decrees. “Full names. And birth dates.”
She means for her new hobby, her interest in learning numerology. Émile notes that she doesn’t ask to go, too. Either she has surmised that he wants to do this on his own or that she’s too tired. His wife seems perfectly at ease—and looks so beautiful and content in the dimming light on the porch—that Émile feels no guilt for this momentary abandonment. He has work to do. He decides to walk up the hill. The talk of drinking at the meeting place, and given that he’s already had a few, squelches any impulse to drive, and Sandra may want the car. An effort is demanded, and he arrives looking forward to the downhill trek in the dark later on, when he’s done here.
He’s early, but not the first to show up. That designation falls to a white-haired couple from Delaware, according to their plates. Cinq-Mars and the couple stand at a height, the drop before them steep and dramatic. They exchange smiles, content to stand by for a sunset that promises to be spectacular. In the interim, whales swim by the island on their way deeper into the Bay of Fundy, and the three are thrilled when the great mammals break the surface before deep dives.
“There’s some dispute,” the man from Delaware contends, and he has a way of twitching his cheeks as he speaks that’s alarming, “about whether it is correct to call a group of fish a school.”
“I’ve always used a school of fish,” Cinq-Mars tells him, not sure that he wants to be a party to this conversation. He was enjoying the peace of the Whistle. “I like it. All those studious minnows wearing glasses and reading books. I suppose they have computers now, too.”
The man doesn’t seem to notice his whimsy. At least the woman smiles. “Some contend that school is a corruption of shoal, that really it’s a shoal of fish.”
“I prefer school,” Cinq-Mars maintains, deliberately cross now.
“Whales as a collective can be a shoal, or a fleet, or a gam, a pod or a school even, or a mob. I like mob, myself.”
Cinq-Mars has his back up without much cause—tourists!—forgetting that he’s a visitor himself. He isn’t going to agree with this man on anything. “I prefer herd.”
“Can it be a herd?”
“I’ve heard,” he tells him, and he’s being honest, “that it can be a herd.”
Outgunned, outmaneuvered, the rigid man from Delaware with the popping cheeks and stern brow gazes out across the water and the hills beyond. His wife shoots a glance at Émile, interested in the fellow who performed an impossible sleight of hand, defeating her husband at being a superior prick.
The Whistle lies not at the very crest of this ridge, but on the downward slope to the sea. Once upon a time, a fog whistle blew from this point, and while it is now gone the name remains. The three tourists lean their thighs against the wood balustrade as they take in the view.
A car bounds up and over the crest toward the threesome.
The man from Delaware seems less relaxed now, somewhat uneasy as the new car parks right in behind his own by the side of the road, leaving little room to squiggle out. He heaves a sigh, as though to designate the newcomer as a dolt, and no doubt assumes that he can ask him to move later on. The new arrival is a diminutive man whom Émile finds familiar, although he can’t immediately place him. He comes straight to the balustrade, takes a long and satisfied gaze, and breathes in deeply as though inhaling the view, then digs a pack of smokes from his pocket, bangs the pack to shake one out, and lights up.
“You don’t
smoke, I bet,” he says.
“Used to,” Émile acknowledges. “Quit. Long ago.”
Most smokers usually say “Lucky” to that, but this one says, “Can’t understand it. Neither why nor how. We’ve met.”
He grins broadly then with an undeniable sparkle, and Émile places him.
“You’re Raymond, from the ferry.”
“I’m Raymond from the ferry,” he agrees. “I hustled you into your car while you wanted to stand by the railing, enjoying the view. Happens every trip. There’s always a troublemaker in the group.” That sparkle again. He isn’t being critical.
Suddenly, the man from Delaware spies more trouble for himself. Evenly spaced, about a half minute apart, six pickups broach the hill and swing down toward the meeting place. The vehicles park in the middle of the road and on both sides, so that the American couple may have to walk home now. Any exit for their car is blocked. The man appears sullen.
Fishermen and their companions tromp down the hill and a pair of flasks are passed. Émile and the couple from Delaware are included in the offering, but only Émile indulges himself. A smooth, peaty scotch.
Over the next ten minutes, sixteen more cars park and empty out. Even walking away from here will be a challenge.
“I built this barrier,” Raymond tells Émile at the cliff, then asks, “Know why?”
“I presume so people won’t fall off. You mean you built it personally?”
“Personally, yeah. But for two reasons.”
“Should I be able to guess?”
“I don’t mind telling you why,” Raymond says with a laugh. “If you can guess, that might be a bit of an insult.”
“Then I’d rather not guess.”
“One you got. We look after our own. If somebody is too drunk or stoned or getting off on some shit, you know what I mean, he has to stand on this side of the barrier and watch the pretty sun go down. We take our precautions.”
“Makes perfect sense. And the second reason?”
“So that one among us can lean back and look the other way, back up the hill.”
“Okay.” Cinq-Mars ponders this. “Someone is looking uphill why?”
“That’s what might’ve been impolite to guess. So that no Mountie can surprise us. We’ll see him coming. He won’t bust us for drinking, unless he’s got a burr up his ass, but he might bust some of the young guys for their M&M’s and whatever else they put down their gullets, or suck into their lungs.”
“Then that makes total sense,” Cinq-Mars admits. “I commend you.”
“Like I said,” the man confirms, “we look after our own.”
This time, that smile of his seems less friendly.
He cocks his head a little, a further indication.
“So you know who I am,” Cinq-Mars surmises. “What I do.”
“You’ve landed on a small island. There’s consequences to that.” Raymond sips from the flask, then passes it along to Émile, who does the same. “Everybody’s got a job to do in life. I’m not holding your work against you. We got people falling off cliffs now where we never did before. I mean, you gotta go back in time for that kind of thing. We’ve got a bit of a history for hanging people off a cliff, just not for letting them drop. Which is different. We got a man of the cloth being sliced up for crow food. That cannot be justified. We need somebody to come in here to undo the wrong. Tidy this shit up. Make it right. I guess that’s you.”
“I appreciate the understanding.”
“Just don’t break up the party. Now that would be a crime against humanity.”
Cinq-Mars sees Pete Briscoe walking toward him. More cars are coming over the crest, until finally they must park on the other side of the zenith.
“I was invited, Raymond. I’m here to join the party.”
He grins broadly again. “Yeah. Right. Like I said. Everybody has a job to do.”
“Raymond,” Émile says, testing the waters as the sun reddens in the west and a cooling sea breeze picks up, “all these people come here. How long do they stay?”
“Everybody keeps their own dance card.”
“That couple over there, see? First car in. Does that mean they’re last out?”
“Remember, I’m the one who shoos folks off the boat. Do they want to leave?”
Émile speaks up to address the couple from Delaware. “Do you two want to leave?” He knows the answer before asking, as their misery is obvious.
They can enjoy the beauty of the evening, the whales below and the crimson setting sun across a vast horizon. All these people, though, so many cars, the alcohol, the laughter, the flirting women and intemperate men, the size of these muscled fishermen, their off-color language, the unmistakable waft of marijuana, this is neither a suburb in Kansas or Delaware and they want to go home. First the woman nods yes, then the man.
Raymond whistles—a strikingly clear and loud trill. Everyone looks up. Everyone, absolutely everyone, stops talking.
“This car here, first in, the Impala, wants out.”
A movie scene. An unbelievable one at that. Car doors are opened and slammed shut, then the vehicles skitter into ditches and up the other side, back up over rock surfaces, buckle up closer to one another, spin their tires up a bank, veer this way, then that. Two dozens engines roar and whine and the pickups budge an inch here, a few feet there. Many back up, some are pushed into an alternative position, and, not unlike the Red Sea parting for Moses, the pair from Delaware are granted a sacred path home. Men and women provide hand signals, the spoken word is at a minimum, and the couple makes the turn around on the edge of the cliff and picks their way back up the hill in their vehicle to say good-bye to the Whistle just as the sun dips below the highest hill on the mainland. Then they’re gone. Cars jostle and shimmy around and suddenly they’re back in place and, as quickly, everyone is back at the cliff’s edge, yammering away as though they’d never been interrupted.
People on this island, the wily old detective takes note, know how to get along. They know how to get things done.
He’s reminded of that opinion a half hour later when, in faint light, a man comes over the hill to join the group, perhaps having parked on the other side of the crest, or he was dropped off there, yet looking as though he just walked the entire perimeter of the island twice around. He possesses a wildness to his countenance that causes others to check him out.
Cinq-Mars takes note. “Who’s that?” he asks his new friend Raymond.
People seem aware of the fresh arrival, and many chatting a moment ago are rendered mute by his approach.
Passing a flask on, not his own this time, Raymond squints to make a positive identification. “Aaron Roadcap, the guy who happened to find the minister’s body not too far from here.”
Cinq-Mars is intrigued, as much by the respect, or fear, the man instigates in others as by the man himself. “Maybe you can introduce us.”
“Trust me, Émile,” Raymond counters, and forces a smile, “he knows who you are.”
Having seen this gathering in action when charged with moving a car, Cinq-Mars doesn’t doubt Raymond’s statement. He’s intrigued. He’s been charged with investigating people who are intricately connected and intimately familiar with one another, so much so that it’s hard to believe that anything, let alone a murder or two, or three, can go unnoticed on this island or remain unsolved for long.
While he senses that Roadcap has been informed of his presence at the Whistle, and has come here specifically to see him—no logic to the thought, pure conjecture and intuition—the man does not approach at the outset. He remains close enough that, given the social interactions at the Whistle, engaging with him is inevitable. Émile is convinced that Roadcap’s purpose is to talk to the off-island, non-Mountie, retired cop who’s mysteriously taken over the biggest murder case in island history. Or is it the second-biggest, as Roadcap is the son of a previous killer? He notes a sea change to the environment. Large groups have formed into smaller entities. Voices lower
across the board. Women are especially quiet—they don’t say much at all. People still return to the pickups and come back again with more beer, but otherwise the tenor on the cliff has changed. A sense of anticipation wafts in the night air. People are expectant.
Without detecting the genesis of a different movement, Cinq-Mars is suddenly brought up short, for he and Roadcap, still apart, have been isolated together. Everyone else has magically moved off, as if a modest form of teleportation shifted the crowd twenty feet away without disturbing the air yet successfully segregating the two men. Émile can imagine being thrown off the cliff at that moment, and among the three dozen witnesses none will have seen a thing. All will deny that he was ever there. The thought creates a tinge of fear in his gullet. His senses are alert. He looks down and looks up again, and Roadcap is beside him, beer in one hand, leaning his posterior back against the rail fence, staring west. No barrier between himself and the sea.
The sun is long gone. The last glimmers of red light are fading.
Émile stands on the opposite side of the fence, protected by it.
He wonders if he says nothing, and merely waits, what the man will say.
Finally, Roadcap twists his neck to look at him.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Admiring the view.”
“What’s left of it,” he says. Then adds, “I found the body.”
“I heard. I know which one you mean,” Cinq-Mars tells him.
Roadcap concedes this with a nod. “There’ve been a few.”
“What’s your interest?” Cinq-Mars asks him, deciding to be forthright.
“In what?”
“In me.”
This man has authority among his peers. Cinq-Mars can see that. This is not an idle meeting or an exchange provoked by insecurity.
“I know how wrong the police can be sometimes. Dead wrong. They have the power to destroy an innocent life. I want to keep tabs on how things pan out.”
Cinq-Mars dwells on that a moment, although really he’s trying to hold to a sense of this man. He looks like a fisherman, except that he’s strikingly handsome, more like a girl’s dream fireman, and lives in a sketchy neighborhood. Yet the very tone of his voice exudes intelligence, which anyone might expect, yet a sophistication to his manner and speech is surprising. Maddy told him to expect an educated mind, but to the degree that he is willing to permit it within himself, Émile finds himself spellbound. Part of that he puts down to the night, the vanishing crimson horizon, the beauty of the sea, and the reaction of others, but part of it cannot be measured by anything in his previous experience.