No murder rap, no lifetime in solitary confinement. Roy should have been happy or at least relieved. But he was furious, and he was scared. Winding up in jail is every dirty cop’s worst nightmare. And somehow Roy had turned things around so it was the police’s fault that he killed his girlfriend. They trapped him. She was going to turn state’s evidence against him; they had convinced her he was bad. His own family had wrecked his life—other cops were the only family he had left by that time.
“You’re gonna feel what I feel,” he had snarled in court that last day after the sentencing. “You’re gonna lose the ones you love most. I’m gonna take them away from you. One by one.”
She knew it was foolish to feel threatened by a man in chains being led away to prison, but the moment had sliced a chill through her. There was something vicious and feral about Roy Elkins at that moment. He meant what he said.
And now he was doing what he promised.
That thought broke her inertia. There was still one action she could take, one life she could save. She allowed herself a bitter little smile. She was still clutching the phone, as if her hand had known all along what to do.
She let out the breath she’d been holding and started poking in the numbers.
Interlude: Monica Terwilliger
We had crossed the harbor together, we had spoken as equals and shared our feelings. But she screamed at me when I grabbed her. I kissed her anyway, and she slapped me. She stumbled back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as if I had thrown a glass of sour milk in her face. Then she scrambled into the boat and fled back to her party and her fancy friends. I sat on the cold sand and cried like a lost child. All I could think was, this isn’t over, this isn’t over. And it still isn’t. That’s what none of them understand. It won’t be over until I end it.
—From Todd Fraker’s deleted blog
Monica Terwilliger was captured by a single phone call.
It came at ten in the morning, taking her out of the lab where she had been updating her local fingerprint archive for the national database. It was tedious work and she was happy for the break, happier to hear from one of her oldest friends after a long silence.
Pooky Parrish—of course, she was Cindy Henderson now, but for Monica she’d never grow out of her childhood moniker or lose her family name…Pooky had become more distant over the last few years, basically since the baby. She spent her time with other parents and rarely went out at night. No more wild dancing at the Muse or the Chicken Box with her crazy-drunk gal pals. Now it was all preschool and pediatrician appointments.
It was okay—they had joined two different tribes, Monica understood that. The truth was they had started to bore each other a little—Pooky tuning out the romantic gossip and Monica nodding through the breathless reporting of a first word or a first step. Losing touch had been easy—lazy, in fact—probably inevitable, but still sad.
So the call out of nowhere on a dull gray Tuesday morning came as a pleasant surprise.
She picked up the landline on her office desk. “Hey, girlfriend.”
“Hey, Mon. What’s happening?”
“You know, the usual, twenty-hour days, using high-tech gear to catch the bad guys. CSI Nantucket with no ads. Or glamorous stars. Or neat endings.”
“Sounds like real life.”
“Yeah. You okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m great…that’s actually what I was calling you about.”
“Because you sound a little weird. Are you sleeping okay?”
“Like a baby. And my baby really did sleep through the night from, like, the age of six months. Now nothing wakes her up. It’s awesome. And speaking of awesome—”
“Oh, God, here it comes.”
“No, seriously. Remember you asked how I lost the baby weight and I said—”
“When I feel like eating a cookie—I don’t.”
“That was my dad’s line, actually, when he quit smoking. Iron Dad. I could never do that. But I didn’t want to admit I was involved with this crackpot woo-woo weight loss group. I mean…it was a lot of money and time and there was—well, there was prayer involved. But I did it anyway, and it worked, and now they’re back on-island. It’s a surprise visit, just a one-day seminar. We’re allowed to bring a friend, and I want to bring you. There. I said it.”
“Is this like fat-shaming?”
“Are you ashamed of being fat?”
Monica had no answer. Her feelings about her body were too complex for a quick comeback. She wasn’t exactly ashamed, but she wasn’t happy either. She missed the way men used to look at her, but it was also kind of a relief. Mostly she was just physically uncomfortable. Buying clothes was a nightmare. She shopped online now. She’d found a great website called StitchFix.
“No one worries about diabetes-shaming,” Pooky said finally, into the fraught, breathing silence. “But I worry about you.”
Monica let out a breath. “Where and when?”
“It’s at 286 Polpis Road, one p.m. Be there or be square.”
“But I can be both.”
They laughed at their old joke, then Monica disconnected and got back to work.
She was nervous driving out to the house a few hours later. She was hungry, too—she hadn’t eaten lunch, in case they weighed her, as if it would make a difference. She was dreading walking into a crowded room, so she made sure to arrive early. There was only one other car parked in the bluestone driveway—the facilitator, or whatever they called themselves. That was perfect—they could chat, get to know each other a little before the other…clients? patients? suckers?…showed up.
Monica parked and sat in the car for a moment, marshaling her nerve. Then she climbed out of the Ford Explorer and walked up to the front door. She was going to knock, but it was already ajar.
She pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside. The house smelled stuffy, unlived-in. Someone should open up a few windows!
“Hello?” she called out. “Anybody home?”
She walked into the living room and stopped short, as if at the edge of a cliff. She didn’t know it, but she was already falling. She literally could not understand what she was looking at. It made no sense, like climbing into the wrong car at the Stop & Shop parking lot. Except a thousand times worse.
She stupidly closed her eyes and then opened them again.
Todd Fraker was still there, standing on the hooked rug, pointing a tranquilizer dart gun at her.
“Hello, Monica,” he said. “Time to atone for your sins.”
Then he pulled the trigger.
Chapter Seven
Mistaken Identities
They say however bad things are, one adult who understands you can make all the difference. My mother was that one adult for Lonnie Fraker. For me, she was everything. For him, she was everything else. She gave him a lot of good advice—bullshit other people if you have to, but never bullshit yourself. Never ask permission, people love to say no. You can never go wrong by keeping your mouth shut. Fat is good for you. Keep your vinyl. Dress in layers. Unfortunately, she also gave him one piece of catastrophically bad advice. She told him to come out to Mark Toland.
—From Todd Fraker’s deleted blog
The three days before the incident at Nantucket High School were frantic and overworked. By lunch on Tuesday I had dropped Chris Contrell firmly into my out-basket—another mundane scrap of business concluded and filed, like a paid Harbor Fuel bill or the RSVP for Lena Perry’s wedding. I had more important things to think about.
It started with a phone call from Franny Tate. For a second or two I didn’t recognize her voice. “Mark is dead, Henry. He’s dead.”
“Wait a second. Hello? Who is this?”
She had called on my private cell, and her number was blocked.
“Elkins shot him. It must have been Elkins.”
“Elkins? Roy Elkins? He’s in jail. Franny?”
“He escaped.”
“Wait, what? How could he possibly—?”
Impatience tightened her voice, like a tug on a clove hitch. But that knot comes loose easily. “Don’t you watch the news?”
“No, not in the last few days. So wait a second…you’re saying Roy Elkins—”
“He’s out. And he’s killing the people we love.”
“He’s—we? What people? I don’t exactly—”
“Hank, listen to me. Do you remember at the sentencing? He said he was going to kill the people we loved. And he’s doing it. He shot Jill Obremski and Carol Stambaugh and Lucy Miner.”
“Jill Obremski? How could that possibly—Chuck would have called me.”
“Chuck hasn’t called anyone. And his phone goes to voicemail. So don’t bother trying to reach him.”
I took a moment to breathe, and Franny let me put it together. “There’s no other connection between the victims, and that means I’m next,” I said.
“Crazy as it sounds.”
“Yeah.”
“At least you got a warning. That’s more than the rest of us got.”
“Thanks, Franny.”
“Keep your people safe.”
I sat still at my desk for a minute or two after we hung up, then opened my computer and googled Elkins. As I scrolled through the various news sites, it became clear that no one but Franny had figured out the connection between Roy’s prison break and the various murders. Or if they had, they weren’t sharing the information with the news media. I’d assign protection details for Miranda and the kids, though the kids would hate it, and Miranda would assume I was being paranoid. More like overcautious—Elkins seemed to have up-to-date intel on his targets. He had killed Jane’s boyfriend, not her ex-husband, and left Chuck Obremski’s children alone. Still, it would be foolish to assume a maniac would behave consistently. Elkins could have a special grudge against me, or he could be decompensating, spiraling down into some unknowable level of madness. So they would have round-the-clock guards until the crisis was over—I could easily spare the manpower.
But Jane presented a more difficult problem. She was Elkins’s apparent prime target, but without a marriage license to officially certify our connection, I would have to protect her myself. I would have to field my own team of bodyguards.
I thought of David Trezize’s old friend Mitchell Stone, who had indeed been the new crew member cleaning up Sylvester Graham’s house. I had spoken to him briefly the day before, expecting a crazy vet with anger management issues. Instead, he was calm and charming—and sincerely rueful about the Faregrounds fracas. He alluded to a complex history with various intelligence organizations, none of which he could talk about, and none of which mattered to him anymore.
“I’m retired,” he told me.
“Okay. Just try to stay out of trouble, old man.”
He laughed. “It’s weird, Chief. Trouble seems to follow me. I’m like a crazy magnet.”
“So, you get into a lot of fights?”
He shrugged. “Mostly, I break them up.”
“Well, feel free to do that.”
It occurred to me now that Stone might be a handy bodyguard, but it seemed a lot to ask of a virtual stranger, and I had a better idea, anyway.
A few months before, I had found myself confronted by a pair of Bulgarian thugs—brothers named Boiko and Dimo Tabachev. Instead of fighting them and getting pulverized or arresting them, I hired them to work for the NPD as part-time undercover operatives, gofers, delivery men, and liaisons to the Eastern European immigrant community. Basically, they did a little of everything and pretty much anything I asked. I paid them in cash and wound up enjoying their company. They were energetic, jovial, basically good-hearted thugs, and they had proved quite useful in tracking down the culprit when the artistic director of the Nantucket Theater Lab had been killed at the start of the summer season.
Dimo was the older brother, and Boiko let him do most of the talking. He was no genius, but he had a street-hustler’s shrewd cunning, and he took care of his brother in various ways. He collected my cash payments and gave Boiko an allowance. “Otherwise, he lose it all with Keno and boiler making drinks.”
“Hello, boss!” Dimo bellowed into the phone when I called him.
“I need you and Boiko to do some bodyguard work for me.”
“I am expert with that! Whose body are we guard?”
“My fiancée—Jane Stiles.”
“Oh. Serious.”
“I’m afraid so.”
He knew our address on Darling Street, and I gave him the information on Jane’s little office in the White Heron actor’s residence on North Water Street. I texted him links to Elkins’s Wikipedia page and the Google Images catalogue of photographs going back fifteen years.
“Be careful, Dimo. Elkins is dangerous.”
A contemptuous grunt. “So is Dimo and Boiko. Ask the GDBOP!”
In fact, I already had. Bulgaria’s General Directorate Combating Organized Crime had been chasing the brothers for a decade but had never been able to gather enough evidence for an indictment. I had spoken briefly with Miroslav Pabian, the GDBOP colonel in charge of investigating a large-antiques trafficking ring. He had been convinced Dimo was running the operation and had broken into the Tabachevs’ Sofia residence—a town house in Boyana, with a view of Yuzhen Park—fully expecting to find various Roman artifacts, including a stolen gravestone. But the house was empty. The brothers were gone—and the snitch recanted.
Dimo was blithe when I mentioned the raid to him. “Foolish to steal gravestone! Much better with coins and crosses—what we are call engolpion—religious items, small, easy to carry. Quick to sell for collectors. Not that I would do! These are terrible crimes, Mr. Police! Nothing sacred in Bulgaria now. Is very bad thing.”
I hung up with a smile—no need for Skype; I could actually hear the jaunty little wink in Dimo’s voice—and turned back to official police business. Rob Roman was coming in later to discuss his investigation of Cindy Henderson. Meanwhile, I had to check the Selectmen’s meeting minutes, review some violations uncovered by the environmental police—people were dumping thinner and old paint in the moors again. And I finally got started on Haden Krakauer’s evaluations of the summer community service officers—the “summer specials”—all of whom were wildly ambitious and eager for a spot on the regular police roster and many of whom chafed at their lack of authority.
Reading between the lines—Haden was always impeccably tolerant with the wannabees—I could see that a few of them were a little too ambitious. How many times could one kid on bike patrol claim that some hapless person of color or immigrant had “backed into” his ten-speed without the cycle showing a single scratch? At least he wasn’t tasing them, but that was only because I had forbidden the use of tasers. Weeding out the bullies was a big part of my job, and I had more than enough of them on the force as it was.
Shortly after that, finally out of the office and back cruising the street, I picked up the backup call from Hamilton Tyler on my scanner.
My excuse for breathing a little fresh air was taking Haden Krakauer to pick up his civilian ride from Billy Built Automotive near the airport. The “officer requests help” request came from Ham and Jill Swenson, his training partner. I put them together hoping she might teach him some of the fine points of social interaction. She was a kind, thoughtful young woman, fresh out of the Seton Hall Police Graduate Studies program, and though her only authority over Ham was a disapproving look, that could often be enough.
Their six was the vest-pocket park near the airport—a cheerless swath of lawn dotted with bronze sculptures of playing children. They were the liveliest aspect of the place. I had never seen an actual person in that little patch of grass, only brown metal boys and girls playing with b
rown metal balls and climbing brown metal trees. A real tree or two might have been nice—and might even have attracted some real children. But the statues were donated, and real trees were expensive. Anyway, after it had spent years as a ghost commons, now some sort of incident requiring police backup had happened there.
Which brought up another complaint. We had too many officers, and we deployed them too freely. I had a standing order against sending more than one extra unit to any disturbance, but I couldn’t monitor every call-out, and sheer force of numbers made some officers feel more secure. I understood that. But five squad cars, with sirens howling and flashers flaring, clustered around some Jamaican’s pickup truck with a broken turn signal served no purpose and made Nantucket look like a racist police state. Three cruisers had arrived at the airport park already—to corral one scrawny-looking Hispanic kid.
Time for another staff meeting.
Byron Lovell and our first African American patrol officer, Patty Stokes, were leaning against their car, sipping take-out coffee from the Trading Post along with Sam Dixon and Randy Ray. Those two presented as a Laurel-and-Hardy pair of townies, though without the charming accents, physical grace, or comic timing. Familiar types—their families went back five generations on the island, and they would always view me as a glorified tourist. I lifted a hand to them as I climbed out of my cruiser. They nodded back.
Hamilton Tyler and Jill Swenson were dealing with the kid.
As we crossed the lawn toward them, passing a bronze fisherman with a bronze toddler on his shoulders, David Trezize pulled up in his new Honda Fit. We had new police band transmitters that used a closed wavelength, but David had managed to hack them somehow. I let it go. Our local alternative newspaper editor was incorrigible, but I liked him for it—and he often proved helpful with my investigations. He loved research, and he never forgot a name or a court case.
Nantucket Penny Page 8
