Mark Toland’s Los Angeles lured her the same way.
He had escaped from this place, and he was throwing her a rope. She was trapped in this petty little town, in a puny, unaccomplished life, stumbling toward middle age. Mark Toland was the natural adversary of all that. He could wreck this little world of hers so easily.
And what did he offer in its place? Glamour, excitement, celebrity. Warm winters and ripe oranges. A sunlit world of pale blue swimming pools and cool Mexican tile. An Architectural Digest world of dinners on the patio with views of the city lights, brilliant nights of conversation with the people she had read about in People magazine, cashmere against the desert chill, palm trees and bougainvillea among the faint smells of cut grass and eucalyptus.
Nantucket would shrink to a crumb of land on the far end of the map, a second-rate film festival, a cage with an unlocked door that she had stepped away from so easily one winter afternoon.
She started the car and felt all the engines inside her kicking to life.
Maybe there was nothing left of her old passion for Mark Toland. Maybe it had never really existed in the first place. Maybe she was just kidding herself. But she deserved a chance to find out. She wanted these stolen days, and she was going to take them. Bliss or disaster, one thing was for certain.
It was going to be a weekend to remember.
Chapter Five
The Docket
I watched my mother die from an overdose, and then the creep who sold her the drugs filmed everything while I was forced to sodomize my best friend at gunpoint. I tried to burn down my shitty school and spent the next twenty years being tortured in a snake pit hellhole loony bin. But the slap is the thing that hurts me the most.
—From Todd Fraker’s deleted blog
I had an unusually heavy docket that Monday, above and beyond the DUIs and minor burglaries—three surfboards, two table saws, and a porta-potty.
Most serious was an unnerving email from Australia concerning what looked like a psychotic superfan of my fiancée’s mystery novels. Then there was the real mystery of Cindy Henderson’s disappearance, with or without her old boyfriend Mark Toland. Neither of them had been seen by anyone since Lina Perry’s wedding reception on Saturday afternoon. Most likely they had run off together, but I couldn’t be sure.
I bookmarked that problem until my meeting with Rob Roman, so I could deal with the fracas that had started in the Faregrounds Restaurant last Friday and apparently continued in the parking lot. According to David Trezize, who had been on the scene with his camera, the incident had centered on an old schoolmate called Mitchell Stone, back on Nantucket after almost twenty years in the military.
Despite David’s endorsement, and the well-deserved slap down for Jimmy Steckler and his pals, I really couldn’t afford to have some ex–Special Forces PTSD-case vigilante cleaning up my town for me. No one was pressing charges, but I still needed to talk to the guy. He might not be so lucky next time.
Haden agreed to get him down to the station, and I pulled the Australian email printout toward me for a second look. Haden, Charlie Boyce, Kyle Donnelly, and Karen Gifford had their own copies.
After the international and interdepartmental formalities, it continued like this:
…most of the crime in Sydney occurs in the Kings Cross area and the section of town near the Central Railway station, rather in the manner of New York City’s Times Square in a different era. But I write today because of a quite unusual crime committed recently in the nearby beach community of Bondi. A woman in her early thirties was beaten and strangled in her home. Her cries alerted a local surfer who followed the alleged perpetrator on foot to another location, apparently the suspect’s home. In fact he was renting a single room in an old house in the hills above the beach. The individual apparently realized he was being followed, and a struggle ensued. The young hero was a member of a local surf society, if you will, who refer to themselves as “brah boys.” They have been involved in much petty crime, but I have always held that they are an essentially decent group of young people, and this David Harcourt made my case for me, most emphatically. He was badly injured in the scuffle but managed to alert the police on his mobile.
By the time officers arrived on the scene, the alleged perpetrator had vacated the area and young Harcourt was rushed to hospital, where I am happy to say he is recovering nicely, receiving many good wishes and much praise for his quick wits and stalwart behavior. I believe he has even appeared on the local television news to tell his story. Alas, the alleged perpetrator’s room was paid for in cash, and there was no record of the transaction. The landlord described a heavyset but otherwise woefully ordinary individual, and neither the housemates, who worked long hours and rarely crossed paths with him, nor the neighbors and local merchants could contribute very much to a meaningful identification. They all agreed he was an American, and no more overweight than the average tourist from the United States.
The question of his nationality prompts me to contact you now. Fleeing his room, he left only a bar of surf wax, a pair of rather the worse-for-wear athletic shoes, and a book, Beyond Brant Point Light, by Jane Stiles, a Nantucket-based author according to the biographical note. Another copy of the book was left at the crime scene, I rather doubt by accident. I was disturbed to observe the very striking resemblance between the murdered young woman and the dust-jacket photograph of Ms. Stiles. One might hope that this is some sort of bizarre coincidence, but I fear not. This man may have some grudge against Ms. Stiles, but I hasten to add that so far as we know, he is ten time zones away from her, across the international dateline in another country, on another continent and a different hemisphere.
He is a stranger in our nation and is currently the subject of a thorough and far-reaching manhunt. If he is still on Australian soil, we hope to find, arrest, and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. Nevertheless, the fact that he may have already fled the country for your jurisdiction makes it imperative that I alert you of the potential danger. It’s a long plane flight but a small world, and getting smaller all the time. Take the precautions you see fit.
I will personally keep you apprised of our progress in the ongoing investigation. My people gripe about the occasional false alarm. I often tell them that a false alarm is the best one. Hoping for such an outcome here, I remain
Commissioner Arthur C. Prelmonte APM
Haden set his copy aside. “So what do we do about this?”
Charlie said, “Shall we put someone on her for a few days?”
“Well, I live with her. We should put out a BOLO on her landscaping truck—to keep an eye out for her. And an occasional drive by the White Heron Theatre Company’s actor’s residence on North Water Street couldn’t hurt.”
Lynne Bolton had given Jane one of the rooms upstairs to use in the off-season after a benefit production of The View from Altar Rock a few years ago. Jane’s adaptation of the book had gone over well, and they’d been pals ever since.
“Speaking of your friends and relations,” Karen said, “there was a break-in at the Cruz house last night. Hector called it in at around two a.m. Dispatch sent a unit over. They found no intruders and nothing was stolen. Not sure what to make of that.”
“Bad dream?”
“Sebastian heard it, too. He ran out into the yard with a baseball bat.”
I nodded. “We have to figure out what the thieves were looking for.”
“Maybe they went to the wrong house,” Charlie offered.
“Could be.”
“Or some kind of intimidation tactic?” Kyle said. “You know… Immigrants, beware! We know where you live. We can get into your house any time.”
I gave him a dubious wince. “Seems a little subtle. Most xenophobes prefer a good beating—or a call to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
“Yeah.”
Haden cleared his throat “We have o
ur own little branch of ICE operating here. And it’s starting to be a problem.”
“Hamilton Tyler?” I’d had trouble with him before.
“He’s pulling over any Hispanic guy he sees in a truck.”
“Like every landscaper on the island?”
“Most of them have green cards, and he knows it. We’re getting harassment complaints, Chief. I know that’s not how you want to present the NPD.”
“No, no, it isn’t. Leave this one to me.”
Hamilton Tyler was the worst kind of small-town rogue cop, from my point of view as a big-city interloper. He was an island kid, from four generations of an island family, embedded in the local trades—his great-grandfather had managed the old ice house on the harbor square, and his grandfather was a plasterer. The uncles on his mother’s side were masons, though his father’s older brother, Teddy “Toad” Tyler, had broken with family tradition and joined up with the state police. Toad served before my time, but I’d heard the stories. He was notoriously brutal and petty. If you pissed him off, he’d break your taillights with his billy club and use the infraction to search for planted drugs. That was the story, anyway. He also liked to shoot people’s dogs when he caught them off the leash.
Lovely guy. Great genes.
Ham’s brothers were carpenters working for their father, a general contractor with a reputation for cutting corners. Years before, when an outraged customer had complained that her house leaked, Reg Tyler had famously retorted, “All my houses leak!” It was a tribute to the old man’s force of personality that a comment like that could settle the issue. Ham had his father’s bullying swagger but none of his shrewd intelligence or work ethic. He was a bully, like his uncle, but difficult to fire. He had a lot of pull in town, and he knew how to use it.
Now it seemed that, for once, young Hamilton Tyler was exhibiting the initiative I encouraged in my officers. In this case it was misplaced and wrongheaded. He had initiated an unauthorized surveillance of the Cruz family—Sebastian and his brother, Ramon. It was odd, but not particularly surprising, that for all his directional microphones and motion-activated infrared camera setups, he had managed to completely miss any sign of the previous night’s intruders.
I called Ham into my office that afternoon. Should I have recused myself from the investigation because of my friendship with Sebastian? That cut to the heart of why I had come to Nantucket in the first place. In Los Angeles, the conflict of interest would have been clear, and my boss would have insisted I step down. In this tightly knit small town, knowing someone, taking the measure of their character through dozens of small interactions over weeks and months and years, was actually an asset, not a liability.
“Also,” as Jane had pointed out with her usual impish candor, “on Nantucket, you’re the boss.”
Ham Tyler was also aware of the situation. “Your daughter’s dating the guy’s kid!” he blurted, leaning across my desk that afternoon.
“Sit down, Ham.”
He seemed to realize he’d gotten carried away. “Uh, sorry, Chief.” He lowered himself into one of the Chippendale knockoffs Jane had picked up at an antique auction the previous winter. They may have been fake, but they were sturdy and they gave the office a little character. Ham sat clutching the arms as if he were about to launch himself over the desk.
“Sebastian Cruz is not a drug dealer,” I said.
“Hell, he isn’t.”
“He’s a landscaper and a playwright.”
“Yeah, I seen that play of his. Kill all the rich people. Sell ’em bad drugs, right? Sounds like a plan to me.”
I caught my hands under the desk and rolled myself up tight to the edge. “I think you’re confusing Sebastian with his brother. It’s understandable. They look alike.”
“All them spics look alike.”
I slammed my hand down. It sounded like a gunshot, and Ham twitched back in his seat. “Never use that word in my office. Never use it in public. In fact—don’t use it at home. Don’t use it all! Don’t even think it.”
“You can’t tell me what to think.”
“No, but I can fire you for cause if I ever hear another ethnic slur come out of your mouth again. I’ll fire you if someone reports you. I’ll fire you for a fucking rumor.”
“Hey, that’s not fair! What if—”
“What if someone got you fired by lying about your trash mouth? That would be tough. My advice? Make fewer enemies. Start being nice to people.”
“People don’t respect a nice cop.”
“Actually, they do, Ham. That’s the way you earn respect—by having power and not abusing it.”
He seethed for a minute or two, and I watched him. Finally: “Why not arrest the brother then?”
“Couple of reasons. Ramon is too well insulated from the day-to-day business, and no one would ever rat him out. We can’t touch him. And there’s something else. He’s actually a moderating influence on the gangs here. There’s kids coming up who think you solve every problem with a shotgun or a machete. To them, he’s a weak old man, and they’d be dancing in the streets if we arrested him. But he keeps the peace. That’s the reality. I don’t like it, but I’ll take it.”
“So you leave them alone, Sebastian Cruz and his greasy little brother.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you’re making a big mistake. I see why they call you ‘The LA Dodger’ Makes sense, right? Stay out of trouble, duck and cover, pretend everything’s fine.”
“Who calls me that?”
He coughed out a laugh. “Gotcha, Chief. I just made it up. But, hey, if the shoe fits, why not? The name might catch on.”
I stood. “No more traffic stops unless you have a clear violation. And leave Sebastian Cruz alone. I know you pulled him over last week and ran the drug dogs through his van for half an hour. You had traffic backed up from the Union Street duck pond to the rotary.”
“I had a tip.”
“You had an attitude. And that’s all you had. Take a few minutes to read the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. It applies to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Violate it again, and I will suspend you without pay pending a Board of Inquiry hearing.”
The new default setting: “Yes, sir.”
He’d give me a “Yes, sir” now no matter what I said. I resisted the temptation to tell him to do something anatomically impossible. “Get out of here and start earning your paycheck.”
“Yes, sir.”
I waved him out with the flick of my wrist and released a long sigh as the door shut behind him, though his Axe aftershave lingered, and he wasn’t the only hater I had to deal with. The island’s burgeoning diversity had revealed its long-standing bigotry. It reminded me of the dry rot and powder-post beetles Billy Delavane found while renovating old houses. “Sometimes it’s best to leave those places alone,” he said to me once. “Or else tear them down.”
Neither option was viable for our civic polity, but the hatred and resentment for Nantucket’s immigrants were getting worse every year. In fact, the situation was getting worse even as I ruminated on them.
My phone rang.
Haden’s nephew, Byron Lovell, was on the other end of the line. “I’m standing in front of Sylvester and Millie Graham’s house, Chief. You need to get down here.”
I’d known the Grahams for a long time. I’d helped their son practice for his driving test and solved his murder a few years later. They had immigrated from Jamaica a few years before I came “around the point,” mostly to avoid the violence there, but it seemed to have followed them north. Sylvester retained a dark sense of humor with a rumbling laugh for the misfortunes of his friends and a honking guffaw for his own calamities. A chum forgetting his wallet after taking ten friends to dinner evoked Sylvester’s sharp-eyed schadenfreude chortle. He reserved the big hoot and
cackle for the time he rear-ended a cop’s cruiser at a stop sign because he was lighting up a joint. Fortunately, the driver of the patrol car was the police chief. I let him go with a warning and took cash for the repair so it wouldn’t jack up his insurance premiums.
Sylvester and his wife, Millie, had succeeded on Nantucket the way most immigrants did—by working rings around the locals. A plasterer by trade, he offered unbeatable prices, his stamina was legendary, and his attitude remained stunningly cheerful, even after all the tragedy he’d experienced in his life. Mike Henderson described singing Jimmy Cliff songs with the jovial pot-bellied juggernaut on some jobsite until Millie stopped by with hot lunches for everyone and insisted they stop their “caterwauling.”
They launched into a heartfelt version of “Many Rivers to Cross” the minute she was gone.
With steady work as one of Pat Folger’s primary subcontractors, and a new house in the Friendship Lane subdivision, life seemed to be turning around for Sylvester and Millie.
But now someone had written Niger Go Home across the shingled side of the Graham house and squirted out a giant swastika above the words. The act was vile and heartbreaking but tempered somewhat by the response of Sylvester’s neighbors. They had gathered with buckets of soapy water and power sanders to scrub and abrade the graffiti from the cedar shakes, and they stood, a group of twenty people, whole families with kids as young as nine or ten, ready to go to work amid a tangle of power cords and hoses.
Byron was holding them off. “I told them, this is a crime scene!” he explained as I climbed out of my cruiser. Their presence was primarily good for moral support, anyway—Pat Folger had shown up with Billy Delavane and a crew of five, armed with flat bars and a pallet of new shingles. I suspected the quiet one I didn’t recognize was Mitchell Stone, but this was not the right time to talk to him. He and two other guys were spreading a plastic tarp against the foundation as the crowd looked on with the rest of the crew poised to rip the violated siding off the wall. The work would be done in less than an hour. These guys could reshingle a whole roof in less than a day.
Nantucket Penny Page 5
