Vineyard Fear

by Philip Craig

  The corporal and I exchanged glares. I felt suddenly childish and turned away and went into the house. I unloaded the Savage and returned it and the shells to their proper places. From an upstairs window I watched the policemen move in and out among the trees and undergrowth.

  There was a telephone beside John’s bed. I looked at it, then sat down and phoned the fire department in Weststock. When the phone was answered, I gave my name and said, “The night before last you sent at least one truck to a house belonging to Dr. John Skye on Academy Row. Problem with a gas fireplace. I want to talk to the fireman in charge of the operation. I’m the guy who may have caused the problem.”

  “Hold on. You want to talk to Scotty.” I heard hollow-sounding voices speaking. A minute later a new voice came on the phone.

  “Scott Wenham.”

  “J. W. Jackson. I’m the one John Skye hauled out of his guest room night before last. You guys came then and made sure everything was okay. I have one question. Did you or any of your men have occasion to go outside of the room where the fireplace is located? Did any of you stand outside of a window and maybe look in as part of your work?”

  “No sir. Our work was all done in the house. Nobody went around back.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. Dr. Skye had shut the valve and opened the windows and doors before we got there. We just made sure there were no leaks or fumes left. How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine,” I lied. “Just fine. Thanks for your help.”

  I rang off and thought about things. As the man said, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

  I went downstairs and outside. The police were gathered around a clump of bushes. I found a space in the circle. In the center of the circle, grass was flattened where someone might have been lying down.

  “If you lie down there,” said the chief, glancing up at me, “you get a clear view of the house, but they can’t see you. Back there in the woods we got some footprints coming in and going out. About a size nine shoe. Maybe a boot. We’ll take casts. Guy came from a car parked out there and he went back to it. He came slow and went back fast. Figure it was the blue car you and Manny saw.”

  The corporal opened a beefy hand. In it was a plastic bag holding three shells. “Found these,” he said. “You own a 9mm weapon?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you borrowed one.”

  “Maybe I borrowed a set of size nine feet at the same time.”

  The corporal looked down at my twelves. “Well,” he said, “if it wasn’t you, it must have been somebody else. You got any enemies?”

  “Just two,” I said. “You and maybe a guy named Lloyd Cramer.”

  “Who’s this Cramer?”

  “He’s a guy with a sore knee and a busted face.”

  “Cramer’s the guy who beat up Dan Wiggins’ niece,” said the chief. “J.W.’s the guy who, ah, held Cramer until the authorities could get there.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said the corporal. “I think I heard that story.” He almost smiled. “Maybe I just changed my mind about you, Jackson.”

  “To know me is to love me,” I said.

  “I don’t know you that fucking well. This look like Cramer’s work to you”

  “The chief says this shooter hurried back to his car. I don’t think Cramer could manage that. In fact, I don’t think Cramer can bend his leg enough to drive a car.”

  “Maybe he hired somebody to do the job.”

  “Maybe. But could you find yourself a hired gun if you were a stranger on Martha’s Vineyard? Cramer’s from Iowa, for God’s sake.”

  “Maybe he hired him in Boston,” said the chief. “After all, Cramer got out of the hospital several days back. He had time to make some contacts.”

  “Same problem,” I said. “Cramer may be a turd, but he’s no professional criminal. I doubt if he knows any of the Boston pistoleers. If you were Cramer, could you find a shootist to come down here and pop me off?”

  “I doubt it,” said the chief.

  “I could,” said the corporal.

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “But if this guy wanted to shoot me, why didn’t he do it at my place? That makes more sense. If I was going to kill me, I’d scout my place when I was gone, maybe stand behind a tree until I got back and pot me at my leisure. I wouldn’t have come sneaking through the woods to do it here.”

  “Spread out, boys,” said the chief to his men. “See if you can find anything else.”

  “There’s something else,” I said to the chief, and I told him about my telephone call to the Weststock fire station.

  The corporal frowned at us. “What are you two talking about?”

  I told him my Weststock story.

  “You mean you think this guy tried for you twice up there before he tried for you down here?”

  “Somebody—stomped John Skye’s flowers right under the window to his guest room. It wasn’t a fireman and it wasn’t me.”

  “So you think it was this same guy. He came in through the window, saw you drunk in bed, and decided to let the gas fireplace do the job? Put your shoe over by the valve, left, and shut the window behind him. All without waking you up.”

  “Maybe. It almost worked.”

  “This guy must really want to kill you.”

  I’d been wondering about that. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think he wants to kill John Skye.”

  — 11 —

  The chief looked at me quickly. Then, just as quickly, he raised a brow. “You could be right. It makes sense out of some of this.”

  The corporal nodded. “Yeah. Could be. The guy’s got it in for Skye, but doesn’t know what he looks like. That’s kind of odd, but it wouldn’t be the first time a guy tried to hit somebody he’d never met. Guy finds out Skye’s coming up to Weststock for a meeting and waits for him. Sees you pull up in Skye’s car and go into Skye’s house. Thinks you’re Skye.”

  “Yeah. Then he sees me walk down toward the college carrying a briefcase and decides to get me right there in the street. If it works, it’s just an accident. But it doesn’t work, so he tries again that night. Seems to me like he must have been inside Skye’s house sometime before I got there.”

  “Yeah,” said the chief. “He could have scouted the place out while John was down here and his family was out west. That would explain how he knew about that fireplace. Thing that saved you was that he didn’t expect anyone else to come home later that night.”

  “Maybe he was one of the people watching the firemen save the house,” said the corporal. “Anyway, yesterday morning he knows he didn’t get you, so he follows you down here.”

  “I made a lot of stops on the way,” I said, “and he must have seen a lot of me here and there. But he decided to wait until we got on the island. Probably figured to get me last night while I was asleep. But when I got the last place on the last boat last night, he had to wait until this morning to come over.”

  The corporal grunted. “Guy knew or found out where Skye lives here on the island. Why didn’t he just drive down and wait for you to show up?”

  “Because he thought I was already here and would recognize his car?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. So instead, he parks on the road and walks through the woods and makes himself cozy in the brush and waits for his shot. What does that tell you?”

  “That he’s not a city slicker,” said the chief. “And that he got here after J. W. did, not before. Otherwise, he’d have shot a lot earlier.”

  “Yeah. Guy knows how to move in the woods. Came here and made his nest without Jackson hearing or seeing him.”

  “I was probably inside the house. If I’d been outside, maybe I’d have seen him.”

  “Maybe,” said the corporal. “And if you did, he’d probably have seen you too and shot you on the spot. Sounds to me like maybe he spotted Skye’s Jeep on the highway and followed you to the driveway and walked in after you. We got too many ‘mayb
es.’ We’d better call Weststock and have them take casts of the prints in the flower bed, if they’re still there, and check the house for signs of B and E. If those casts match the ones we’ll get here, we’ll know we’re doing more than guessing. I think we’d better get after that car pretty hard.”

  “I’ll see how that’s going,” said the chief, moving away toward his car.

  “Guy hasn’t had time to get off the island,” said the corporal. “We have a good chance of getting him, if he hasn’t just abandoned the car.”

  “Which is what I’d do,” I said.

  He nodded. “Me too. But maybe somebody will see him do it and we’ll get a description of him. One good thing: without a car, he’ll be on foot. Less mobile.”

  “If you find his car, maybe it will tell you who he is,” said Manny.

  “Everybody’s a cop,” said the corporal. “I know that I wouldn’t try a hit and run in my own car. Stolen, probably. We’ll contact New York and see if they can help us out. You watch your ass, Jackson. This guy is still out there and he still thinks you’re Skye.”

  He walked away. I looked at Manny. “Exciting times on Martha’s Vineyard. You’d better call Helen and tell her where you’ve been. She’ll think you fell into a band saw or something.”

  “Damn! You’re right!” He headed for the house.

  An hour later, I was back at the station. Manny had gone reluctantly back to work. The wheels of island justice were turning, and there were a lot of them. It is one of the absurdities of Martha’s Vineyard that on an island with a permanent population of ten thousand, there are at least ten different police agencies: six town police forces, the Sheriffs Department, the State Police, the Registry of Motor Vehicles, the Environmental Police, and probably one or two I don’t know about. All of these were looking for the blue car and its driver, who was presumed armed and dangerous.

  “What a summer” said the chief, sucking on a cold pipe and reaching for a tape recorder. “Now, what do you remember about the guy driving the car in Weststock?”

  “Not much. Youngish face, maybe thirty. I have a hard time telling how old people are these days, what with everybody trying to look younger than they are.” I reached into my memory, but found very little. “A white guy. Tanned skin. Yellow hair. Shades. That’s about it. The kids who saw the incident couldn’t agree about much. I got the impression from what they said that the yellow hair might be a wig. Shades and a wig make a fast, easy disguise.”

  “You get the names of any of those people?”

  “Just one. Amy Jax.”

  “And you think this blue car might have been that one, too.”

  “I think so. I couldn’t swear to it.”

  “Okay. I’ll have somebody drive you home. You think you’ll be okay there? If not, I’ll have an officer hang around with you for a while.”

  “I’ll be fine. If the guy thinks I’m Skye, there’s no reason he’ll come looking for me at my place.”

  “Yeah. Now you may know John Skye better than I do, so tell me, why would somebody want to kill him?”

  “I have no idea at all.”

  “He never mentioned anything that might give us a lead? A woman? Gambling? An argument with a neighbor?”

  “Not a thing. With Mattie and the girls he’s got all the women he wants or can handle. He plays a nickel-ante poker game where he couldn’t win or lose much if he tried. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about him.”

  “A mad student he might have flunked? Some colleague who lost a committee vote somewhere along the line and blames John?”

  “I don’t know, but I doubt it. John’s not the type to strike fire in people. He’s a mild guy.”

  “Save me from mild guys,” grumbled the chief, sucking his pipe.

  I thought of Bernadette Orwell’s journal entry. In the beginning, John Skye was a wonderful, wonderful person. By the following fall, Jonathan was beautiful and brilliant and she trembled at the very thought of his touch. That didn’t sound too mild.

  “You going to try to contact John and tell him what’s going on?”

  “No,” he said. “Not yet. So far, we’re just guessing. Besides, we may nab this guy before he gets off the island. If we do, we’ll know what’s really going on. You’re right when you say that a guy after Skye probably wouldn’t come looking for you at your place. But what if the guy really is looking for you?”

  “The only guy who might be looking for me is Lloyd Cramer, and Lloyd’s not going to be in shape to do me much damage for a while. I can look after myself, so don’t plan on having one of your summer kids watching over me. If it turns out that I do need to protect myself, I don’t want to have to worry about protecting your guy, too.”

  “Famous last words,” said the chief. “I’m going to have people keep an eye out for Cramer anyway. If he comes onto the island I want to know about it, and I’ll let you know.”

  A young cop drove me home. She was very careful about her driving and very serious when she asked me if I was sure I didn’t want her to stick around. She had a pistol at her belt which meant that she had taken the training and passed the tests which allowed her to carry the weapon. I thanked her and said no and she drove carefully away.

  No assassin was waiting inside my house or in my shed or in my woods. I unlocked the gun case where I keep my shotguns and the rifle my father used for deer hunting in Maine. From a drawer at the bottom of the case I got out the old .38 I’d carried when everybody else in the Boston PD was opting for .357 Magnums. I’d bought the pistol cheap from a young cop who was moving up in firepower. I fired the weapon only once while on duty and it had done its job even though it was a mere .38. Like most cops, the kid who bought the Magnum never had occasion to draw his weapon. I hoped he never would.

  I loaded up the revolver and went out and put it under the seat of the Land Cruiser so I’d have it in case I met the guy in the blue car while I was on the road. It struck me as a melodramatic act, but then again, people didn’t try to kill me very often and I felt rather melodramatic.

  I needed to think, so I got my rake and basket and headed for the quahogging grounds. Quahogs are hardshell clams which you can eat in a lot of excellent ways: as littlenecks on the half shell (with just a touch of lemon or seafood sauce), as clams casino (broiled with a bit of garlic butter and bacon), as stuffed quahogs (Euell Gibbons’ recipe is the best—next to my own, of course), or in chowder. There’s not much bad about quahogging. Preparing them is pleasant work, eating them is joy, and raking them is a time for leisurely thought.

  I was after chowder makings, so I drove down to Katama, turned east over the sand, and drove all the way to Pocha Pond, on the southeast corner of Chappaquiddick, where, for reasons known only to the Great Quahog in the sky, there were no little quahogs but only big ones. How the big ones got big without being little first is a cosmic mystery whose answer I do not expect to discover until I reach that Beautiful Clam Flat with Sands of Gold.

  I saw no man in a two-wheel-drive blue car trying to follow me in my four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser. Even if he had somehow prevented me from noticing him, he would have been in sand up to his hubs as soon as he left the pavement, so I felt secure.

  I put on my shellfishing hat, the one with a picture of a helicopter on the front and my shellfishing license pinned to the side, and waded out into Pocha, rake in hand, basket-in-inner-tube in tow. It was an hour before low tide, so I could get a long way out, where the big ones grew. When I got there, I began to rake. I rake in circles, pivoting until I’ve covered the ground all around me, and then moving a few yards away and doing it over again. In an hour I can usually get a basketful and during that same hour I can think without interruption and perfect my tan. Not bad.

  I ran various things through my head. None of them made sense to me. One problem was that I couldn’t see John Skye as the type somebody would try so systematically to kill. On the other hand, I’d never thought of him as wonderful or beautiful, either. But then, h
ow much do we really know about even our close friends? How much do they really know about us? We all have private, even secret, selves which we do not share. We all have dark parts of our lives, little shames, if nothing else, which we keep to ourselves. All of us, perhaps, have given offense, some of which we may not even be aware. All of us, perhaps, have committed at least petty crimes. Dostoyevsky was not the only one to note that there is little difference between prisoners and prosecutors. Perhaps some act of Skye had provoked these assaults on his life. Perhaps I had nearly died because of Skye.

  Of course, the hunter could be after me. I wondered whom I might have so offended. Cramer? Or an agent of Cramer? Who else?

  A few things were fairly clear. The hunter was systematic about his work, not merely a killer on impulse, as are so many murderers who, once the moment of rage has passed, are as confused by their acts as anyone else. Skye’s nemesis, or mine, as the case might be, wanted his victim dead, was willing to stay at the job, was good in the woods, and possessed the sort of weaponry most people, including most killers, don’t have.

  What did he do for a living? How was it that he could spend so much time hunting his victim? Most people have jobs that would prevent them from going off for a week or two to kill somebody. If they did leave, they’d be missed. Or fired. This guy apparently had both time and money.

  Was he a car thief? Most people wouldn’t know how to steal a car unless the keys were left in the lock. All of us have heard about jump-starting or wiring ignitions, but how many people actually know how to do it?

  Not many.

  If he wasn’t a car thief, where did he get the blue car? Where would I get one, if I wanted one to use in a hit and run?

  When my basket was full of quahogs, my brain was still pretty empty. I drove back to Edgartown and went to the police station. The chief and the corporal were there.

  “Well,” said the chief, “I see you’re still alive, at least. Any new ideas?”

  “Only two old ones,” I said. “Cramer is not the guy.