I nodded. “Just like Jane’s book.”
Rob said, “Right, your fiancée. She used the tradition in one of her mysteries. If you throw a penny off the ferry when it’s passing Brant Point, it means you’ll come back.”
“Jane says old-timers used to wait until they got to the end of the breakwater.”
Mike jumped in. “You see? She’s coming back—that’s the message! Maybe this will even the score. I fucked up a few times myself, Chief. We both know it. And this makes sense for Toland, too. He probably thinks he can sweep in and whisk her away. I mean…the guy’s in the movie business. He likes big gestures and happy endings. They’re his bread and butter.”
“So you’re firing Rob?”
“Well…I mean…”
Rob was shaking his head. “Mike thinks I’m nuts, but that penny thing gives me the creeps. I say someone came back already. Someone who should have stayed away.”
“That’s what happens in Jane’s book—someone comes back for revenge.”
“Yeah.”
I backtracked a little. “How about David? Any pennies there?”
He frowned. “No. Not that Kathleen mentioned. But no one really looked too hard, either. Far as I know.”
“Cindy’s coming back,” Mike said. “She may be home already. We understand each other. We both have baggage…”
Rob puffed out a breath. “Women with baggage! I tell my girlfriends—carry-on only.”
I knew a little of his history. “Including the married woman in Seattle? The one you tracked down and fell in love with? Who trashed your life and turned you into unemployable pariah?”
He shrugged. “The exception proves the rule.”
“Not in my business. For cops, the exception disproves the rule. Exceptions are the weak spots where your slipups get you in trouble.”
“I learned from my mistakes. I hope you’re not making one here.”
We ended our meeting on that ominous note. I agreed with Mike, but I could sense the faint, puzzling tang of trouble in the air, just as Rob Roman did. It was like that moment before you hear the sirens, when you sniff the cozy scent of woodsmoke riding the winter breeze.
And you think: That could be a house on fire.
Karen Gifford passed them on the way out, nodding to Rob Roman and smiling at Mike. She looked fresh and well rested, dressed in khaki pants and cream silk blazer over a pale-blue open-collared shirt, black hair pulled tight behind her head in a short ponytail. My long marriage to an Imelda Marcos-level shoe obsessive allowed me to identify her Italian leather wedge sandals as vintage Pappagallos from the seventies. But the shoes were her only vanity; she wore no watch, no jewelry, no earrings and, as far as I could see, no makeup. Pretty but stern, she could have been a bank officer or the executive director of some high-end nonprofit organization if not for the badge clipped to her belt.
But that was the one item in her wardrobe she really cared about.
I half stood and gestured her to a chair. “Hey, Karen. What’s up?”
“Nothing good.” She pulled a file from her shoulder bag and handed it across to me. “I just printed this stuff out. It’s from Chris Contrell’s blog—MousetrapCity dot blogspot dot com. It was easy to find; I just googled him. He’s not hiding anything—in fact, he’s pissed off that he doesn’t get enough hits and comments and shares and likes. His little videos don’t go viral. Maybe if they were shot in focus and the sound was audible…on the other hand, best not.”
I was paging through the file. I picked a post at random:
At first I was going to call this blog Fortress Island becus I belived that the illegal immigrents were an invading army. We were being invaded and we needed to defend ourselfs. Now I kno better. I realized the truth a few days ago when I was riding my bike to school and I saw this Mexican woman with three kids waiting for the bus. She had a baby in her arms and she was pregnint. This is not invasion, this is infestation. Arrive, steal jobs, pay no tax or insurance and prokreate prokreate prokreate. They say if you see one roach in your sink at night there are thousands in the drane. You don’t crush the one bug, you call the exterminater you tent the house and gas them all at once. Same with rats and mice or skwirruls in the house. Just kill them. The opposite of a sanktuary city—mousetrap city. Cum on in and taste the cheese!
When to do it was my question and then I red about Constitution Day. It has a fake name like all these illegals who get alieses when they get here. Even our own Police Chief. I looked it up. His real name is Kenisovsky. They changed it, like that made them real Americans. So we’re going to celebrate the fake holiday this year and make it real.
I set the page aside. “Jesus Christ.”
“Constitution Day is also called Citizenship Day,” Karen said. “That’s the ‘alias’ Contrell is talking about.”
“September 17. That’s today.”
Karen paled. “What do we do?”
“Close down the school.”
“Can we do that? On the basis of one blog post? Bissell won’t like it.”
“I’m calling him.”
But he was already calling me.
Bissell’s voice was pitched high, wavering and panicky. “There’s a shooter in the school, you have to help us, he’s got an automatic rifle, he’s wearing a ski mask, and—oh, my God!—” He was cut off by the sound of gunfire, weirdly hollow—pop pop, pop pop pop—across the phone line.
“It’s Contrell,” I said. “He’s doing it.”
We leapt up and raced out of the office. Barnaby Toll was on dispatch. I told him to send every cruiser on duty to the high school. We sprinted out to the parking lot, dove into my car, and hit the flashers and the siren as we peeled out.
It made a good show, but the real show had already started.
Chapter Nine
Citizen’s Arrest
It turned out that Ed kept all the money from his drug deals and petty thefts in a steamer trunk buried in the sand near Second Bend. “Like a pirate,” Lonnie said.
“Yeah, well, those fucking pirates knew what they were doing. Delavane can’t put this dough in the bank, he can’t fence the jewelry on-island, and keeping the stuff at home is too risky. It makes so much sense that Toland started hiding his drug money there, too. It’s an easy score. And tomorrow night we’re going to take it all.”
—From Todd Fraker’s deleted blog
Billy Delavane and Mitchell Stone were standing twenty feet up on a staging plank, replacing a rotten window casing on a Surfside Road hospital-housing saltbox when Mitch noticed the boy with the duffel bag.
He touched Billy’s shoulder. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“That clanking.”
“I heard the staging creak, I heard your hammer, and somebody’s got WACK playing around the corner, but—”
Mitch held up a hand to silence him. “Just look. Down there, the kid on the bike with the duffel bag.”
Billy squinted. “I see him. What about him?”
“Who brings a duffel bag to school? I had one just like that when I shipped out for Afghanistan. Where’s he going this morning?”
“What are you saying?”
“He’s got a gun in there, Billy. Probably some kind of assault rifle. With extra magazines. That’s what I heard clanking.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
Mitch gave him a humorless little smile. “That’s a long story. And it’s mostly classified.”
“Debbie’s in there.”
“So is Ricky.”
“What do we do?”
Mitch unclipped his tool belt and set it down on the plank. “What we always did. I take the lead. You back me up.”
“Okay, only shouldn’t we call—”
But Mitch was already halfway down the ladder. He jumped the last few fe
et and started jogging easily up the sidewalk. By the time Billy had dumped his tools and scrambled down, Mitch was dodging through the stalled traffic, angling for the main entrance of the high school. Billy put on a little speed to catch up. Someone honked at them. Then they were sprinting across the wide pavilion, under the overhang, through the glass doors, and inside.
The scene was nightmarish—utterly unreal, sickeningly familiar. Billy’s first thought, his animal impulse, was to turn and flee. But Mitch must have sensed it; Billy felt the iron grip of his friend’s fingers on his forearm. And the gritty whisper, “Hang in there, buddy.”
Two dozen students were flat on the floor of the big lobby. Through the glass panels that walled off the administrative offices, he saw secretaries and a janitor cowering. Bissell’s door was closed. Maybe he’d had the presence of mind to dial 911. Billy had read somewhere that in an emergency the body went into self-destructive overdrive—people’s hands shook so badly they couldn’t even poke the digits into their phones. Sometimes they dialed 411 by mistake.
Billy threw a thought like a football at the superintendent, tucked away behind the doors and partitions that would allow him a momentary sense of security, a hard, short screen pass, mind to mind.
Take it easy, Mr. Bissell. Get it together. Breathe.
Twenty feet ahead of them, standing in front of the glassed-in basketball court, a scrawny, pimple-faced kid held what even Billy could tell was an AR-15 assault rifle with its slim barrel extending from the wider cylinder and the evil horn of its ammunition clip jutting down a weapon of war. In an ordinary American small-town high school, it was as frightening as a bomb, a vest of dynamite wrapped around the torso.
Billy could feel his pulse spiking.
“Bring me every spic in this fucking school!” the kid shouted. “Every one of ’em. I want ’em standing in front of me right now, or I start killing everyone!”
To punctuate the threat, he tipped the rifle up to squeeze off five shots into the ceiling. The recoil knocked him back a step and spun him in a half circle. He stumbled against the glass wall of the gym and leveled the barrel again. “Do it now!”
Billy had time to think, I hope no one’s upstairs.
Then he heard the first sirens.
So Bissell had made the call! Or someone had. There had to be a thousand cell phones in this place. It didn’t matter.
Help was on the way.
Mitch started walking toward the kid, slow careful steps, like a firefighter moving across a compromised floor into the smoke, toward the flame. Billy wanted to call out, to stop Mitch, but his voice snagged in his throat.
The kid spun the rifle, pointing it at Mitch’s chest. Mitch raised his hands.
Outside, the sirens were getting louder. There were more of them. Three? Four? The chilling thought slithered through Billy—What if the cops panic the kid, tip the situation out of control? They were close to the line already.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Mitch asked quietly, taking another step closer. “I’m no cop. I was banging nails across the street ten minutes ago. I’m no Hispanic. I’m German Irish, both sides. I was a Marine, two tours in Afghanistan. MOSCOM—you know what that is? You do, don’t you? Marine Corps Special Operations Command. The Raiders. Was your dad in the Corps? I bet he was.”
“He was in the Army.”
“Sorry to hear that, kid.”
“He hates you fucking jarheads. He says you’re not even a real branch of the military. Just part of the Navy.”
Mitch grinned. “Yeah. The men’s department.”
“He could kick your ass.”
“Maybe. Where did he serve? Panama?”
“Seventh Infantry Division. Operation Blue Spoon. He beat you Devil Dogs there.”
“He deployed first, that’s all. Marines cleaned up the mess.”
Mitch was just a few feet away from the kid now. Outside, the sirens stopped. The sudden silence meant the cops would be storming inside any second. Would the kid freak out?
But Mitch had the boy’s undivided attention.
“I’ve seen men lose their shit in combat, kid. I saw a boy not much older than you machine-gun a camel. He just shredded the fucker. He caught a movement in the corner of his eye and cut loose. My best friend over there shot at a ten-year-old girl, thought she was carrying an IED. It was a frying pan she picked up from a bombed-out café. She was taking it home to her mom. He winged the kid and hit the pan. Kid recovered, but one of the ricochets killed our bomb dog. A little Kelpie named Rags. Forty-two missions, saved our ass a dozen times, and Jimmy takes him out with a stray round for no reason but nerves. He was hugging that dog in the dirt, sobbing like a baby. You kill a kid today, that’ll be a thousand times worse. You never come back from that shit, kid. Trust me.”
There it was—the clatter of the cops charging into the lobby.
Mitch shouted over his shoulder. “Stay back.”
The voice behind Billy answered. “It’s Chief Kennis. I have ten officers with me.”
“Tell them to stand down!”
Kennis gave the order.
Mitch took another step toward the kid, and Billy could sense something about to snap, like the moment before that German shepherd had bitten him, years ago. Saturday morning, the customers out for the day, the big dog guarding the house, tracking his every move, every muscle flexed to a violent stillness. Billy watched Mitch, undivided attention shrilling behind his eyes, waiting for the moment.
“Pack it in, kid. Nothing’s happened, yet. You can still salvage this. Put the gun down, and we can talk. That’s all you have to do, just—”
Mitch’s left hand lashed out like a striking snake. He knocked the rifle aside, twisted his wrist to grab the barrel. The kid squeezed the trigger as the gun dipped toward the floor, and Mitch sent him stumbling into the glass wall with a single back-fist strike to the nose.
Mitch had the rifle now—the kid was stunned and bleeding. But it wasn’t over. Some dumb macho football type was on his feet charging the kid. Mitch wrapped him up with one arm, but the move put his back to the shooter, and Billy saw the boy yanking a gun from his waistband. Billy was charging before his conscious mind had even registered the movement or recognized the weapon. He tackled the kid just above the knees. The big automatic discharged into the glass wall, shattering it, and they hit the linoleum in an avalanche of shards, deafened by the shot. Below him, the kid’s sweater was stained with blood. Billy smelled wet wool, fear, sweat, and the stink of cordite.
“Ham will get you for this,” the kid snarled at him.
Then the cops were grabbing the boy and dragging him away.
Mitch helped Billy up. “Nice work, buddy. You saved my ass back there.”
“Gotta have backup.”
Mitch grinned. “Fuckin’ A.”
Mitch caught sight of his ward—was that the right word?—Ricky Muller, and jogged over to help the kid up. The boy looked dazed but unharmed—just like everyone else. Mitch had managed to close the incident down without injuries, but Billy was still reeling. The white-water wall of events, a classic big-wave wipeout, was still tumbling him along, as he clawed for the surface, gasping and sputtering when he got his head clear, his nervous system trying to play catch-up, failing and overloading. A three-wave hold-down was nothing compared to this.
But Mitch was fine. A closeout set at Mavericks might drown Mitch, but here? He was in his element, relaxed and calm as he shook hands with the police chief.
“That was a risky move, Mr. Stone,” Kennis was saying. “That could have gone sideways in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, well. It’s like Louis Pasteur liked to say—”
Kennis finished for him. “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”
“Something like that.”
“I need you to come into the station after work today to give a compl
ete deposition on what happened here this morning.”
“A debriefing.”
“If you like.”
Mitch made a small but unironic salute. “Yes, sir. I’ll text you my number, also. It might come in handy someday. Speaking of work…Billy?”
“Give me a second.”
“Sure thing. See you out there.”
Mitch moved off through the crowds of tense but listless police and baffled students.
Kennis clasped Billy’s shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”
“You did great back there. You’re a hero.”
Billy felt a crooked smile crack his face. “My dad always used to say that about people. ‘He has to be the hero! Look. I put up all that crown molding!’ That’s what you’re supposed to do! Anybody would have done that.’”
He felt Kennis’s kindly stare—sunlight breaking through clouds on an autumn day, unexpectedly warm on his face. “You think anyone would have done what you did?”
“Well, I mean…”
“You think any of the police officers here would have had the presence of mind to tackle that boy? While he was holding a loaded gun?”
“My dad would have.”
“But he wasn’t here, Billy. You were.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
“No. Thank you.”
“Listen, about these cops…” Billy looked around nervously.
“What?”
“The kid said something to me when I took him down. ‘Ham will get you for this.’ That’s Ham Tyler, gotta be.”
“You know him?”
“We went to high school together.”
Nantucket Penny Page 12
