by Luanne Rice
Just as I slid everything else into my satchel, I heard the cry again. Distant but chilling—the mountain lion or a human? Whatever it was, I worried the sound might wake up Griffin and the neighbors, so I quickly shut the lid to my computer and let myself out the door. I slipped the key back under the angel and darted as fast as I could back to the shadowed shelter of the boulders.
I heard the call again, a wail of despair. An auditory illusion made it seem it was coming from inside our house or one of the other houses along the road. The crash of breaking waves echoed against the rocks, distorted the sound, confusing me in terms of direction. I realized it sounded more human than animal, but then it rose in pitch like the cries of a cat.
Thirty minutes had passed, because here came the patrol car. I walked back into the woods, disappearing into the brush and trees. For a moment I wondered if I should have brought the wild animal mixture—my scent would be fresh, and if search or cadaver dogs were brought back to the Bluff, they could easily track me. Then I realized—it wasn’t that dumb tin of powder that had been protecting me from being found—it was the cougar itself.
The dogs had smelled the mountain lion, and they wouldn’t court danger and death by entering its territory. I headed uphill, across the sacred burial ground, and felt my father with me more than ever. The wind was blowing off the sea, and I caught the scent of salt and seaweed coming from the cove where Ellen’s body had come to rest.
I heard the cry one more time, and when I turned, I saw the headlights of the security car stop halfway down the road. Men’s voices drifted through the night—the guard talking to someone else. Someone on the Bluff was awake—and watching?
I thought of Leonora and what she had said to me. How foolish I had been to show Fingerbone to that group. There was such an air of we must protect Griffin. I was a threat, and protecting him would mean I didn’t surface again, that I be kept from telling the truth. Griffin might not even have to order it himself. Everyone knew what he wanted. And they all had vested interests in his election.
I wondered if I’d been glimpsed on one of the neighbors’ security cameras, and I ducked into the woods and rushed the rest of the way back to my cabin to make my plans. To decide what I should do next.
SEVEN DAYS LATER
33
CONOR
The seven rivers and fifteen ponds in and around Black Hall had been dragged in the search for Claire’s body. The knife had been tested for prints and DNA—no fingerprints, but the blood was Claire’s. The floating foam key chain was confirmed to have come from the Sallie B. The key fit the lock on the hatchway leading into the cabin.
The trash bag found in the Woodward-Lathrop Gallery’s recycling bin contained bloody rags, a black ski mask, and a pair of black leather gloves. Again, the blood was Claire’s. The lab was testing the other items for DNA, but so far nothing had come back.
Black Hall residents had been canvassed; security tapes from alarm companies and video doorbells were being analyzed. An hour into reviewing footage from houses and businesses along Main Street, Conor got lucky. At 5:30 a.m. on the Tuesday after Claire’s disappearance, a black pickup had stopped first in front of the Starfish Sweet Shop, then outside the gallery.
It was first light—the sun had not yet fully risen, yet the streetlamps had already gone off. The pickup had tinted windows; it was impossible to see through either side. Although the windshield appeared to be clear, no camera captured a head-on view.
At each stop, the driver got out. He looked tall, dressed all in black, with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. At the Starfish, he crouched down to shove something into the drain. At the gallery, he opened the recycling bin and inserted the bulging black garbage bag as well as Claire’s shadow box.
Conor ran and reran the footage, looking for identifying characteristics of both the driver and the truck. He enlarged the image of the wheels and tires, and he would show them to Don Vietor, a state police sergeant who specialized in vehicle IDs.
The rear Connecticut license plate was visible in one single frame—as the truck drove away from the gallery. Conor looked up the registration, but no such number existed. The plate was a fake or, more likely, had been altered. The right front bumper and passenger door looked damaged, as if the truck had been in an accident at one time.
Conor spent a long time watching the driver get in and out of the vehicle. His facial features were hidden by the hat, showing Conor that he’d taken trouble to disguise himself. If the discarded items had not been found, police would have had no reason to look at security footage in the center of Black Hall. The streets around the gallery had already been thoroughly searched and canvassed in the two days immediately following Claire’s disappearance.
The driver must have thought the drain and gallery bin were perfect places because the police had already checked this stretch of road. That indicated that the perpetrator was local, was most likely following the investigation closely, and had a sense of dark and hostile humor: it must have amused him to dispose of Claire’s shadow box in the recycling bin outside the gallery where her work was displayed.
“What are you up to?” Jen asked, walking into Conor’s office.
“Watching the tapes again. Give me a fresh take, will you?” Conor asked. “Look at this guy and tell me what you see.”
Jen pulled up a chair and watched the monitor. Conor played the clip that had been recorded outside the Starfish shop—the driver getting out of the truck, crouching by the drain, standing up, and getting back in the front seat. Next, he ran the gallery clip—showing the same basic movements with a decent side view of the truck.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the passenger door.
Conor leaned closer. “Looks like a piece of duct tape,” he said.
“Covering something? An insignia or company name?”
“Good catch, Miano,” Conor said.
“Another thing,” she said. “The driver moves as if he’s stiff. Uncomfortable. Look—there—the way he arches his back.”
They were silent, watching the clips again and again. Jen was right about the driver—he stood, arched, touched the lumbar region. Maybe it was just stiffness. What about Griffin Chase, all those hours spent in his desk chair? Who connected with the case had been injured? Dan Benson, during the boat explosion. Or Alexander Chase? Word had gotten around about him smashing up his Porsche. Ford was an athletic kid. And all the men on Catamount Bluff seemed like sports-playing Ivy League types. And Wade was old, kind of creaky.
“We sure it’s a guy?” Jen asked.
“Not completely but there’s something in the movement that seems . . .”
“Guy-like?” Jen asked, smiling. “Not saying you’re sexist, but women can throw out evidence too.”
“You’re right. But who? Sloane Hawke? I can see her having it in for Sallie Benson but not for Claire. They were close friends.”
“Jackie Reid?” Jen asked. “Considering it’s the gallery’s recycling bin.”
“No. Trust me,” Conor said.
“There’s the Claire–shadow box connection—that’s big. And just because she’s your sister-in-law doesn’t mean you know that she wouldn’t . . .”
“I know,” Conor said. “I just do. Let’s move on.”
“Okay, understood,” Jen said. “The big question is, How do these two cases go together other than superficial ways? It’s a small town, lots of acquaintances involved.”
“Starting with Ford’s feelings for Sallie,” Conor said.
“Right, maybe Claire tried to interfere. Told him it was a bad idea to go after Sallie? Even laughed at him? And he killed her.”
Conor pondered that. “That could be. Raging hormones, Claire confronts him, and he attacks her in the garage. I can see that. And making the big jump to the explosion not being accidental . . .”
“In spite of coast guard findings . . . ,” Jen said.
“Because we think in terms of murder, it’s what we do,�
� Conor said. “So if it wasn’t an accident, why would he kill Sallie if he loved her?”
“Because she didn’t want him. She loved Edward. Ford’s ego couldn’t take it. And if he couldn’t have her, no one else would either,” Jen said.
“So unrequited love. And fury at his stepmother. Where would he hide Claire’s body?” Conor asked. “No traffic went in or out of Catamount Bluff late that Friday, other than a FedEx truck.”
“He took a boat? He bribed a FedEx driver?”
“The driver’s clean.”
“Boat, then,” Jen said. “Or he could have just thrown her into the water. Waited for the outgoing tide.”
Conor nodded. There was something haunted about that Catamount Bluff stretch of coast. He thought of Ellen Fielding, of how she had washed up less than a mile from the Chase house, in the cove. The tide and currents had carried her there.
Where had they carried Claire?
He hit play again to watch the clip of the truck in front of the gallery one more time. He squinted, scrutinizing the piece of duct tape. He enlarged the image as much as he could, and he saw the barest arc of something painted in gold from under the top edge of the tape.
“What does that look like to you?” he asked. “Is it part of a letter?”
Jen leaned forward. “I think it is,” she said. She grabbed a pen and wrote out the alphabet. “With a curve like that, it could be one of several letters. But see that little rise on the left? Looks like the top of the R’s vertical.”
It took a moment, but then he nodded. Now that she had put the idea in his mind, he could see the R.
“And look at the far end of the tape, just below it. A little squiggle—the tail of a lowercase g.”
Conor didn’t hear that last part because he had focused on the crumpled bumper again. His mind raced back to the day of Claire’s disappearance, to the hit-and-run on the Baldwin Bridge. A speeding black pickup truck had clipped the back of a Subaru with enough force to send it smashing through the guardrail, into the safety fence.
Conor checked the incident report. He had arrived at the scene at 3:30 that afternoon. The bridge spanned the Connecticut River, between Black Hall and Hawthorne. A drive from the Chase house to the bridge would take five minutes. That fit smack into the middle of Conor’s timeline.
Conor had gone straight from the scene of the accident to the Woodward-Lathrop Gallery, where Claire hadn’t shown up for her show.
There were cameras on both ends of the Baldwin Bridge. Conor tapped a code into his computer and brought up the live feeds. Then he typed in the date and approximate time and got footage for 3:20 p.m. through 3:40 p.m. on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. He knew that troopers had checked this video, but Conor was looking for something else—a getaway from the attack at Catamount Bluff.
At the exact time stamp of 3:23 p.m., he saw the truck smash into the Subaru.
“Whoa,” Jen said as they watched the truck strike the car’s rear end, spin the vehicle around, and keep going. “What’s that?”
“That’s our truck,” he said.
Conor enlarged the image so he could see the driver head-on through the windshield. His face was not visible, because he was wearing a ski mask. Conor felt a combination of triumph, because this was obviously the same truck seen on the gallery’s video of someone dumping evidence from the attacks on Claire and Sallie, and frustration, because the mask hid the driver’s face.
“Who are you?” Jen asked out loud.
Conor didn’t say anything; he was staring at a taped-over word on the driver’s door, wondering what it could be.
34
TOM
Tom picked up the phone to call his brother. “I’ve got to talk to you,” he said when Conor answered.
“I’d like that, too, but I’ve got these two cases,” Conor said.
“This is about the Bensons,” Tom said. “I could head to the barracks, or you want to come down to the dock?”
“The dock. I’ll take a break,” Conor said.
Forty-five minutes later, Tom watched his brother’s Ford Interceptor pull through the coast guard pier security gate and park in the lot beside a trailer holding an RIB—a rigid inflatable boat. Tom stepped outside. The day had started out foggy, but the sun had come out, and the mist was beginning to burn off.
Several coast guard vessels were tied at the dock: Nehantic, two twenty-seven-foot RIBs, and a USCG Jet Ski. There was a storm at sea, and although the harbor waves were not large or dramatic, the hardware holding the floating docks creaked as they rose and fell on swells pushed in from far out in the ocean.
“Thanks for coming down,” Tom said, meeting Conor on the pier.
“Your office is a little nicer than mine,” Conor said, gesturing at the harbor and waterfront. Tom led him to a bench at the end of the dock, and they sat. One of the cross-Sound ferries passed by; the high-speed Block Island ferry was just loading up with passengers.
“So what’s up?” Conor asked.
“Did Matt Hendricks give you a call?” Tom asked.
“Yes, about the fuel line?” Conor asked.
“Yeah.”
“We talked,” Conor said. “Jen Miano’s lead on the Sallie B case, so she had a more extended conversation with him than I did. Our lab is working with him.”
“Anyway, here’s what I want to run by you,” Tom said. “Mermen.”
“You mean like mermaids?”
“Yeah but male.”
“Weird but okay. Why?”
“The little girl,” Tom said. “Gwen Benson. She’s started talking a bit. The first few days, nothing at all. But when I went to see her yesterday, she told me that her brother is alive.”
Conor bowed his head. When he raised it, Tom saw the compassion in his eyes. His brother knew without being told that Tom was torn up by not having been able to rescue Charlie.
“Wishful thinking?” Conor asked.
“I assume so,” Tom said. “But she said some things that I can’t get out of my mind.”
“Like what?”
Tom nodded. “She said that a boat had been following the Sallie B all the way from Hawthorne. She called it the ‘blackbird boat.’” He paused. “I asked her why that name, and she didn’t really say much.”
“Did her parents know whose it was?” Conor asked.
“She said they didn’t see it. Only she and Charlie did.”
“Where does the merman come in?”
“He was driving the boat.”
“This sounds like a kids’ book. Do you think she read it somewhere?” Conor asked.
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “It’s so far fetched. The kids had been in that yellow raft, and the blast blew them into the water. They both fell overboard. She said the ‘merman’ rescued Charlie and was calling her name, as if he wanted to save her too. She said he took Charlie to a sea castle that she had seen before in a picture, and it had stone birds all around it.”
“What else did she say about, um, the merman?” Conor asked.
“Nothing,” Tom said. “She got upset and started to cry. She was begging me to rescue Charlie—I called the nurse.”
“I’m sure that was the right thing to do,” Conor said.
“It all struck me as pure fantasy—a way to cope with the nightmare she’s living through. But I don’t know.”
“You can’t tell me you’re taking the merman seriously,” Conor said.
“I don’t know, Con. She drew pictures in a book, and I can’t stop thinking that they show something that really happened—or that she believes happened.”
“Where’s the book?” Conor asked.
“At the hospital,” Tom said. “She had it with her in the solarium, and she let me look through it, told me what everything meant.”
“She trusts you,” Conor said. “You rescued her.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Tom said. He still felt miserable about Charlie. His younger brother must have read it on his face; he reached over and p
atted him on the back. “Thanks,” Tom said.
“Look,” Conor said. “You know none of this is real, right?”
“It is to Gwen,” Tom said and saw his brother looking at him as if he thought he were crazy.
“I’ll call Jen and fill her in,” Conor said. “Thanks for the lead.”
“Want to see what’s left of the boat?” Tom asked. “While you’re here?”
“Definitely,” Conor said.
Tom led Conor toward the large boathouse. The double sliding doors were open, and even from ten yards away the smell of burned fiberglass and wood was overpowering. As often as Tom viewed the wreck, he was shocked that anyone had survived it.
“Wow,” Conor said.
“I know,” Tom said.
The two brothers stood in the doorway, slowly made their way around the hull. A large hole had been blown in the starboard side, and the burn pattern showed flames had leaped up to deck level, destroying the superstructure: the cabin and the flying bridge.
“With a hole that size, she would have sunk in minutes,” Tom said.
“There’s almost nothing left,” Conor said. “How did anyone get off in time?” Conor asked. “Dan, Gwen? Charlie, if Gwen really did see him in the water?”
They stood there for a few more minutes, solemnly gazing at the boat, looking for any small detail that might provide answers. Tom’s thoughts were racing, unable to get Gwen’s story out of his mind. He figured that Conor must think he was crazy, but then his brother turned to him.
“I want to see that book of her drawings,” Conor said. “Will you come to the hospital with me, ask her if she’ll show me?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “When?”
“How about now?” Conor said.
The brothers got into Conor’s sedan and went straight to Shoreline General—just a few miles away from the coast guard pier. But when they got to the nurse’s station on Gwen’s floor, a nurse Tom had never met before told them that Gwen had been discharged.