The Shadow Box

by Luanne Rice

  15

  TOM

  Seventy-two hours after the Sallie B went down, the coast guard called off the search for Charlie. Tom couldn’t think of a time he had felt more shattered by the failure of an SAR operation. He’d known from the beginning that finding the Benson children was a long shot. After they rescued Gwen and saw that Charlie wasn’t in the yellow raft with her, the search shifted from rescue to recovery.

  Both Dan and Gwen were still in the hospital, recovering from their injuries. While Dan had been taken to Easterly, Gwen was at Shoreline General; they were known for their superb pediatric care. Other than the single word Gwen had whispered to Tom, she still hadn’t spoken.

  The incident was under investigation by both the USCG and the Connecticut State Police. Tom had been tied up on Nehantic, then spent two good hours on paperwork detailing the operation.

  Last year he had been appointed AIES—adjunct investigator for Easterly Sector, meaning he had to follow up marine incidents. So when he finished at his desk, he headed toward the Hawthorne Shipyard, where Jeanne and Bart Dunham, the couple who had first come upon the wreck, kept their sailboat.

  It was Memorial Day, and he hit major traffic on I-95. The weather was beautiful, and with hordes of people heading to beaches and harbors, he doubted he would find the Dunhams there—it was too nice a day not to be sailing. But when he parked in the shipyard lot and asked a rigger where Arcturus was docked, he found the boat in her slip and the couple sitting on deck. She was reading a book; he was staring at an iPad.

  Still in his USCG uniform khakis, Tom walked down the finger pier, stopped at the stern of the vessel. She was sleek and pretty, well maintained with a white hull and a freshly painted blue cove stripe just below deck level. The couple glanced up as he approached.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m Commander Tom Reid from the coast guard. Are you the Dunhams?”

  “Yes, Jeanne and Bart,” the woman said.

  “Are you here about the Sallie B?” the man asked.

  “I am.”

  “Come aboard,” Bart Dunham said.

  Tom stepped from the wooden pier onto Arcturus’s deck, ducked under the frame of the white canvas awning that stretched over the cockpit from the cabin to the sailboat’s backstay. The Dunhams both stood, and they shook hands with Tom. The day was sunny and warm, but the awning kept the cockpit fairly cool.

  “Please sit down,” Bart said. “Would you like some iced tea? Or a rum and tonic?”

  “Iced tea would be great,” he said, and Bart went down below and almost immediately handed up a plastic glass. Tom heard bottles clinking and figured Bart was fixing himself a drink.

  The three of them sat in the U-shaped cockpit, on blue-and-white-striped cushions.

  “You’re not out sailing,” Tom said. “There’s a good breeze.”

  “Right now, I never want to sail again,” Jeanne said.

  “It must have been upsetting,” Tom said.

  “Oh my God,” Jeanne said. “You wouldn’t believe. I can still smell fuel and smoke and burning hair. I can’t get the taste of it out of the back of my throat. Was that hers? The burning hair?” She shivered.

  “We did recover Mrs. Benson’s remains,” Tom said, leaving out the part that, yes, the smell of incinerated hair and everything else had probably come from her.

  “I’ve been reading about it online,” Bart said. Tom noticed the way Jeanne shot him a look. “The daughter’s okay?”

  “How okay can she be?” Jeanne snapped at Bart. “She was blown out of the water, her mother’s dead, her little brother is drowned or worse!” Then, turning to Tom, “Did you know we saw a shark in the area? Good Lord, the boy could have been attacked! Didn’t you see our statement?”

  “I read it, but there was no mention of a shark.”

  “That wasn’t a shark fin, sweetie, it was the dog,” Bart said.

  “How would you know? You were half in the bag. I saw what I saw.”

  Tom made note to add the shark to the report, although he had his doubts—sharks known to attack humans were rare to nonexistent in the part of Long Island Sound where the wreck of the Sallie B had been found.

  “After a shocking experience,” Tom said, “such as the one you went through, memories can be muddled. Sometimes they don’t come back for a long time. Is there anything else you saw or heard that you might not have remembered right away?”

  “Well, the note,” Bart said.

  “What note?” Jeanne asked.

  “I showed it to you,” Bart said.

  “You did not! What note?” she asked.

  “Just when we got back to the dock and I hosed her off—you know I always do, wash the deck after coming back in,” he said, looking at Tom.

  “Good for the boat,” Tom said.

  “Get the salt off,” Bart said. “Helps keep the rust away. And I like a clean boat.”

  “So when you hosed her down . . . ,” Tom said, wanting Bart to get back on track.

  “Right. I found this scrap of paper stuck to the side of our damn boat, above the waterline. I mean, it had ripped, some of it was gone and the ink was pretty much unreadable. But I could see it was signed ‘Love, Sallie.’ Like the end of a note.”

  “Where is it now?” Tom asked. During Dan’s second interview with the police, he had said Sallie had been distressed, and her distraction had caused her to make a mistake in the galley, that she had caused the explosion herself. Could she have been upset enough to do it on purpose? Could this be a suicide note?

  “I threw it out,” Bart said. “It was soggy as hell. Must have stuck to our hull when we motored through the debris. There was a bunch of ash and other rude shit plastered to our port side. I tossed it all in the dumpster.” He gestured toward the shipyard.

  Tom glanced over. “Where’s the dumpster?”

  “In that alley between the rigging shed and the big boat building.”

  Tom nodded.

  “It’s in a plastic garbage bag along with a couple empties. Don’t bust me for not recycling.”

  “Very funny,” Jeanne said.

  “Do you know what happened, what caused the fire?” Bart asked. “I mean, I’m reading the news, hitting refresh constantly, but there’s nothing.”

  “Not yet,” Tom said.

  “Yeah,” Bart said. “I thought you might tell us something off the record sort of, considering we were right there. And the part we played, and all.”

  “It was horrible,” Jeanne said, her eyes bright with tears. “The Bensons, we didn’t know them, but the boating world is so small, especially around here, at the mouth of the river. We saw them all the time.”

  “Where?” Tom asked.

  “You know, coming and going at West Wind Marina. Or out on the Sound. Just, out having fun. All of them, the four of them,” Bart said.

  “Sometimes just him,” Jeanne said. “With a few guys. You know, friends heading out for some fishing or whatever. She was well known, you know. Once I heard ‘Sallie B’ was Sallie Benson, I recognized her name right away. A decorator.”

  “Famous,” Bart said. “It’s all over the news. She designed half the muckety-mucks’ houses on the shoreline.” He finished his drink, swirled the melting ice around the bottom of his glass, and took a step toward the companionway. “Can I get you another iced tea?” he asked, glancing at Tom.

  “No, thanks,” Tom said. “I’ll be going now. Thanks for your time. I’m going to call the state police right now, and someone will come by to collect that trash bag with the letter.”

  “Waste of time. You can’t even read it,” Bart said.

  “It’s one big nightmare,” Jeanne said. “As if it wasn’t bad enough seeing what happened to the people on board a boat we knew, we rescued Maggie, their little dog, and she’s probably going to die. It’s a miracle she survived at all.”

  “Yeah, and we’re out a couple hundred bucks for a vet bill,” Bart said, coming back with a full glass. “Just to find out she�
�d swallowed sea water. Breathed some into her lungs too.” He took a long drink. “Not that it’s all about the money, but I wouldn’t mind getting reimbursed from Dan Benson. When he’s out of the hospital, I mean.”

  “Bart!” Jeanne said, giving him a sharp look.

  Tom nodded. He shook the Dunhams’ hands and stepped onto the dock. Then he stopped and turned around.

  “What vet did you take her to?” he asked.

  “Silver Bay Veterinary Clinic,” Jeanne said. “We could tell she was having breathing problems, so we got her there fast. I haven’t had the heart to call and see if they’ve put her to sleep yet. Poor little Maggie.”

  “We did our best,” Bart said, putting his arm around her.

  Tom left Jeanne leaning against her husband’s shoulder. He took out his cell phone to call Conor and tell him about the bag full of Arcturus’s trash. He knew Conor was busy on the Claire Beaudry Chase disappearance, but ever since Tom had been appointed an investigator, his younger brother had become his mentor.

  He then called Detective Jen Miano, lead detective on the Benson case, to inform her of the situation. Then he called Conor. He parked his truck at the entry of the alleyway where the dumpster was located, to guard it, on the off chance some refuse truck would come by to pick up the boatyard’s trash on the national holiday, and settled back to wait for the police.

  16

  CONOR

  After getting Tom’s call, Conor drove to the Hawthorne Marina. He spotted Tom standing by his truck, talking to his stepdaughter Hunter. Hunter wore her Connecticut State Police uniform and hat.

  “Hello, Trooper Tyrone,” he said as he approached her and Tom.

  “Hi,” she said, her expression serious.

  “What brings you here?” he asked.

  “Detective Miano asked for me,” she said. “I thought I was going to get the boot for busting protocol and giving Tom a heads-up about the yellow raft instead of letting him get the news from command.”

  “Yes, that wasn’t cool,” Conor said, sounding as stern as possible. He made sure not to catch Tom’s eye. It was the Reid way, to let law enforcement family in on details of shared investigations.

  “I know,” Hunter said.

  “Good to have you on the case,” Conor said.

  She nodded. “Thanks a lot. I’m glad to be here.” She glanced toward the road and quickly walked away, as if she didn’t want to be seen talking to them.

  Jen Miano’s Ford Interceptor drove into the parking lot, followed by two more state police vehicles. She parked and walked toward Conor and Tom. Dressed in a blue pantsuit, she looked sharp and professional.

  “So what’s this about a note?” she asked.

  “Bart Dunham says he found one stuck to his boat’s hull. He said it was signed ‘Sallie.’”

  “Why didn’t he tell us when we questioned him?”

  “The shock of it all, I guess. And he likes his rum. In fact, it’s in the trash bag with some empties.”

  “Got it,” Jen said. “So we’re going dumpster diving?”

  “Yes, and glad you brought reinforcements,” Conor said, watching personnel suit up in white hazmat suits, booties, and gloves. He glanced at Tom. His brother had been at sea for three days straight and looked it.

  Both Reid brothers stayed with Jen, watching the forensics team. They taped off the scene with yellow tape and headed into the alley to start pulling trash bags out of the dumpster.

  People walking to and from their boats had seen the police cars and had gathered to find out what was going on. Hunter was stationed outside the line of tape to tell everyone to move along. After a few minutes Tom excused himself and went back to his office.

  “So,” Jen said, looking at Conor.

  “Yeah?”

  “This is my case,” she said. “And you’ve got a missing woman to find, so I’m wondering why you’re hanging around the boatyard with me.”

  “I miss you, Jen,” he said. “I never see you now that we’re not partners.”

  “Right, that’s it,” she said.

  “Okay, Claire Chase and her husband, Griffin, used Sallie Benson to design their kitchen.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a coincidence, Sallie and Claire both victims of violent crimes on the same day. And they knew each other,” Conor said.

  “So someone coordinated attacks on the two women?” Jen asked.

  “I’d like to figure out the links,” Conor said.

  “Well, Dan says that Sallie’s responsible for the boat. She was the only one below.”

  “And what, she did it on purpose?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll see what this note says,” Jen said.

  “She didn’t care that her whole family was on board? Her two kids?”

  “I hear you,” Jen said. “But we’ve seen crazier.”

  “What about him?” Conor asked. “Who’s to say he’s telling the truth about Sallie being down below? Maybe he did it.”

  “Blew up his own boat? Again, what about the kids—would he do that to them?” Jen asked. “You think he’s a family annihilator?”

  Conor thought that over. “What about his initial statement?” he asked.

  “When he said ‘they got her’?” Jen asked.

  “He was doped up,” Conor said. “Not thinking or talking straight, didn’t know what he was saying. What if he meant ‘I got her’? What if he wanted to kill his wife, not the kids?”

  “Right,” Jen said, nodding. “He could have put both Gwen and Charlie aboard that raft, but something happened to Charlie—he got swept away, fell overboard . . . Dan never intended for that to happen. He didn’t want the kids to die.”

  The puzzle pieces didn’t fit. Conor had to believe that if you wanted to kill your wife, an explosion was a particularly tough way to go, especially when you and your children were at risk. And the connection between Sallie and Claire still bothered him.

  Just then, one of the hazmat-suited officers walked to the head of the alleyway and waved. Jen started toward him and Conor followed. They ducked under the crime scene tape and saw eleven plastic garbage bags spread out in two rows in front of the dumpster. Two state police officers were standing there.

  “It’s got to be this one, Detective,” Trooper Alan Williams said, pointing at a trash bag, lumpy with discarded bottles.

  “Open it up,” Jen said, and the tech slit the plastic.

  Conor crouched beside her. He saw a banana peel, a melon rind, a chicken carcass, wadded-up paper towels, the remains of several squeezed-out limes, beer cans, and two empty quarts of Mount Gay rum, all covered with coffee grounds.

  “And there it is,” Jen said. Conor saw it too. The wet paper was wrapped around an empty bottle. One edge was torn off, but he could see the cream-colored paper. The handwriting was faint and blurred.

  “Can you make out any words?” Conor asked.

  “No,” Jen said. “But we’ll get the note to the lab right away, and I’ll make sure you get a copy. You’ll let me know if . . .”

  After three years of being her partner, Conor knew what she was about to say.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll call you if anything in our investigation points back to yours.”

  “Shit, Conor,” Jen said. “Back together again.”

  17

  TOM

  The children’s hospital was quiet. It was late afternoon on Memorial Day, and the shifts had just changed. It seemed to Tom Reid that there was pretty much a skeleton staff. On such a pretty day, the first holiday weekend of summer on the Connecticut shoreline, the corridors were quiet and mostly empty.

  Tom walked down the gleaming first-floor hallway, carrying a black duffel bag with the USCG insignia on it. He stopped at the nurses’ station, said he was planning to visit Gwen Benson, and asked for her room number.

  “Are you a relative?” the nurse asked. She was petite with long brown curls. Her name badge said Mariana Russo, RN.

 
“No,” he said, showing her his ID.

  “Coast guard? We’ve had the police here, talking to her. Even a reporter from the Shoreline Gazette trying to get in.”

  “Has she said anything?” Tom asked.

  “No,” Mariana said. “She’s completely shut down. We’re limiting who goes into her room. She’s been through enough of a trauma—having strangers asking questions just adds to it.”

  “I understand,” Tom said. “I don’t have any questions for her. I just want to see her. I’m the one who pulled her out of the life raft.”

  “Oh,” Mariana said, looking at him more closely. “It’s nice to meet you. From what I’ve heard, her rescue was a total long shot.”

  “It was,” he said.

  Mariana was silent, seeming to consider whether she should allow Tom into Gwen’s room or not.

  “It might help her to see you,” she said. “But I don’t know. She got agitated when her father walked into the room. They brought him over from Easterly Hospital to visit her. The mental health staff thinks it’s probably because he brings back memories of what happened. Or maybe it was seeing him all bandaged up—kids don’t like to see their parents hurt.”

  Tom nodded, picturing what had been left of the boat, the evidence of explosion. He wondered how much Gwen had seen of the aftermath. He wondered whether she had seen her mother’s body, whether she knew that the search for Charlie had been called off.

  “Other than her dad, her only visitor has been her aunt,” Mariana said. “Her mother’s sister, Lydia.”

  “How many times has her father been here?”

  “Twice. Both times she got so upset her doctor thought they should take it slow.” She looked at Tom for a few seconds. “I’m going to let you in for a few minutes. But you’ll have to leave right away if there’s any sign of distress. She made a very high-pitched sound when her father was here.”

  “I’ve heard it,” Tom said. “When we found her. She was peeping, like a little bird. Nonstop, even after we brought her to the ER.”

  “Then you know.”

  “I do,” he said, holding tight to the duffel.

  They walked into a room directly across from the nurses’ station. The curtain had been pulled to shield Gwen from the eyes of people passing in the hallway. Mariana beckoned Tom to follow her.