Let’s make one. Together.
—From Sippy Bascomb’s deleted blog
“No phones, no engines, no cross talk. Three men, three kayaks, three guns. I figure a fifteen-minute paddle—the tide is rising, so once we get past the cut it will carry us up-harbor. That’s a break. We hit the shore, Dimo secures the shack, the chief takes the gallows, I neutralize the Frakers. Aim to kill, center mass, or keep that gun packed. No fancy shooting. This is not a movie or a Wild West show. We hit the beach, spread out, and sprint. The shack is twenty yards from the Third Point waterline. That’s a twelve-second run on soft sand with no cover. Keep low, stay sharp, and get ready to wing it.”
I looked up from Mitch Stone’s hastily drawn map. “That’s the plan?”
He gave me a cold stare. “That’s always the plan, Chief. Things go sideways the second you engage. Set your strategy and stick to it? You wind up dead. Guaranteed. No one winds up dead today, all right? That’s the plan.”
We were standing in the harbormaster’s office on Washington Street. The kayaks were bobbing in the water at the end of the pier. Mike Henderson hovered by the door. He had overheard my phone call with Mitch; they were working on the same jobsite, and he tagged along, hoping to join the rescue team. I had to tell him no. Secretly, I think he was relieved. He would have been a liability in combat, and he knew it.
I looked at Dimo Tabachev.
He nodded. “We go. We do.”
Mitch touched his shoulder. “This is a rescue mission. The man who killed your brother, Roy Elkins? He’s dead already. So is the animal who put him up to it. The man out there killed Sippy Bascomb, himself.”
“The newspaper reported that as a suicide,” I said.
Mitch gave me a cheerless smile. “But we both know better.” He turned back to Dimo. “We cool?”
Dimo nodded. “As cucumber.”
“Revenge is like booze. It makes you aggressive—and it makes you sloppy.”
Dimo grinned—a flash of his old self. “Plus hangover is bitch!”
“Ain’t it the truth? Ready, Chief?”
“Ready.”
I almost capsized the narrow little boat lowering myself into it from the dock, but once I was seated comfortably with the double paddle in my hands, I got the feel for it quickly. The little craft was light on the water, and it shot ahead with every stroke. I could feel the tug of the current pushing me toward Monomoy at first, but Mitch was right—soon the pulse of water released us and we were riding the flow away from town, paddling hard north by northeast, Dimo beside me, both of us following Mitch Stone’s lead, fighting to keep up. It was hard work. If I was physically exhausted by the time we crossed the water, I’d be no use to anyone. But the adrenaline kicked in, as it always does. The best drugs are the ones we make ourselves right there in the suprarenal glands, conveniently located above a kidney near you.
We had reached the shallows at Third Point when we heard the shots. Had the Staties and the FBI decided to launch their attack? But I trusted Dave Carmichael. Then what? Was Todd Fraker just shooting people now? Had he come totally unhinged? All I could do at that moment was paddle harder.
Three more strokes, and the nose of the boat hit the sand.
When I looked up from dragging my kayak onto the beach, I could see Jane, naked, standing on the gallows platform with the noose around her neck.
Then Fraker yanked his arm down, and she dropped out of sight.
I went insane, as insane as Fraker himself, bellowing as I pounded across the soft sand into the dune grass, skirted the shack past the Delavane brothers, Ed inert and Billy pulling on the belt he had wrapped around his thigh as a makeshift tourniquet. I took the steps to the platform two at a time.
Then Fraker was standing in front of me. I charged into him, slamming him with my shoulder, and he staggered back two steps, pinwheeling his arms. On the third step, he ran out of platform. He fell, squealing, and I saw his knife lying next to the open trap door. I grabbed it and started sawing through the rope. Jane dangled below me, trying to lift herself, her hands slipping on the greasy rope, over and over, the noose jabbing into her throat each time. Fraker had smeared something on the hemp, some kind of oil, and then left her hands free so she could struggle before she died.
The hate rose up in me like vomit.
Jane cried out: “Henry!”
The hemp was dense, the knife was dull. It seemed to shred one filament at a time.
“Henry! I can’t hold on! I—”
Her voice turned into a strangled cry as she lost her grip again and the noose tightened around her neck.
I kept sawing at the rope—I was getting through it. I screamed at Dimo, “Get under the scaffold,” but he was already there. Finally, the last sinew of twine shredded, and Jane fell into his arms. He already had his jacket off, and he wrapped her in it.
I bounded down the stairs, jumped the last three steps, my gun in my hand as I hit the ground.
Fraker was on his knees, both ankles broken, helpless and terrified. He wasn’t even human, just some bristling animal threat, a rat in your kitchen, a snake on your car seat, something you kill by instinct, in some panicked convulsion of the nerves. But this was a man, a helpless, injured man, and I killed him.
I murdered Todd Fraker.
But he didn’t die.
I aimed for his quaking chest and felt a grisly spurt of joy as I squeezed the trigger and put a .45 caliber round into his heart.
The bullet never reached him.
Mitchell Stone broke my wrist with some kind of karate kick. My shot went wide, and I dropped the gun. The pain was excruciating; I was trembling, hyperventilating. I clutched my wrist, swarming globules sparking in front of my eyes. I thought I was going to faint.
But I saw the truth. Mitch had saved Todd, but he had also saved me, pulled me back from the brink in the only way anyone could have. When my vision cleared, I looked up, and Jane had pulled loose from Dimo, charging me, leaping at my chest, throwing her arms around me.
“Oh, my God, Henry…thank God you came, you found me, you—he…I thought—oh, God, I thought I was going to—”
I held her tight, wrapping my good arm around her. “Shhhh. I’m here. It’s okay. You’re safe. It’s over.”
As I spoke, Todd got to his feet somehow and launched himself at me. Mitch caught him in mid-air, as a firefighter on the burn-line might catch a sandbag, and lowered him into the dune grass.
That was when Lonnie Fraker showed up, wild-eyed, piling out of a stolen SUV with a gun in his hand.
“LET HIM GO!”
Mitch straightened up and took a step away from Todd.
“Help him up, Todd! I’m getting us out of here.”
Todd pushed himself back up onto his knees. “Forget it, Lonnie. We’re through.”
“No, I just figured it out! We take the boat, but we don’t keep it! We hijack one of these sailboats in the Sound and make them take us down the coast. Once we’re aboard and we sink the Boston Whaler, we’re invisible! It’s protective coloration. They can’t search every boat on the East Coast.”
“I can’t even walk. I think I broke both my ankles.”
“I’ll carry you! It’s only fifty feet. Then we’re gone.”
“You’re not thinking. The Coast Guard is on alert by now. They have drones, too. I’ve seen them. We’d never make it.”
By this time I had picked up my gun and was gripping it in my left hand. Jane moved behind me, shivering uncontrollably, huddled into Dimo’s jacket. “Put the gun down, Lonnie. Todd is right.”
“You’re outgunned, friend,” Mitch added. His feet were set apart in a classic Weaver stance, his gun cupped in two hands, standing sideways to the target.
“You have no moves left,” I added.
“We can take hostages!” Lonnie shouted.
It took a moment for the idea to penetrate the fog, but then Todd’s face lit. “Hostages! Yes! You start shooting, the bullets go through those walls and cut those two in there apart. You just have to aim low, angle the shots down, right, Lonnie? You can’t miss at this range!” He turned back to me. “Call off the Coasties, we’re taking one of those prisoners with us. Maybe…Monica Terwilliger. You won’t let her get hurt!” He jammed his hand into his pocket and pulled out the handcuff key. “Take it! Get her out here.”
“No.”
“Ten seconds, and I start shooting.”
I cut my eyes toward Mitch. “Ready?”
He nodded.
“You won’t shoot until I start shooting! That’s the law! So someone’s gonna die. Make the call.” No one moved. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.”
The shout came from behind him.
“You killed Cindy! I heard the shots, you fucking psycho!”
It was Mark Toland, charging across the dune grass with a jagged scrap of driftwood in his hands, raised like a club. He took on a bizarre stature as he ran, turning huge and primal, a black bear defending its turf, lumbering slowly and yet eating up the distance with those big strides. His wide, darting eyes told the story—his brain had short-circuited, overloading with hate and rage and blood lust.
I understood perfectly.
Lonnie wrenched himself around, his own face twisted with hate, more hate, bigger hate, long-fermented hate, and fired.
The shot took Toland in the chest and knocked him backward, sitting him down hard. Lonnie’s second shot flattened him, and Toland was dead before his head hit the sand. The echoes of gunfire boomed out over the water, and Lonnie stood staring, transfixed by the motionless pile of clothes and flesh fifty feet away, half-hidden in the dune grass. Lonnie’s wide-open face was transformed at that moment—transfigured, as if he’d seen God, or killed the devil.
Maybe he’d done both.
Then Dimo plowed into him, taking him down hard, and it was finally over.
Five minutes later the cavalry arrived: two boats full of Coast Guard troops, two medevac helicopters, and the Sikorsky Jayhawk that had just flown me to Boston. Pete Salros climbed out as three state police Ford Explorers pulled up. Dave Carmichael himself stepped out of the lead vehicle and walked up to me. An aide scurried behind him with a camera.
He reached out to shake my hand, saw the swollen wrist, and thought better of it. “Good work, Henry.”
I just stared at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was late for my own marriage. I worked through the birth of both my sons. But I never miss a photo-op, and this is one for the history books.”
I ignored him. The narrow strip of land felt toxic, radioactive. Using the carnage and human misery of the place for some crass splinter of political gain dumbfounded me.
I hugged Jane and turned to Pete Salros. “Get us the hell out of here.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Good Enough for Nantucket”
They airlifted Mark Toland’s and Ed Delavane’s bodies to the coroner’s office in Barnstable and his brother Billy to the new, oversized Nantucket Cottage Hospital, along with the other captives. Apart from Billy’s leg and the abrasions on Jane’s neck, they suffered little more than cuts, scratches, and dehydration. Cindy Henderson jumped out of the lead state police SUV—they must have picked her up somewhere near Great Point—and watched as the bodies were loaded into the chopper.
She walked hesitantly up to me, reached out to touch me, then withdrew her hand. “He’s—gone?”
I nodded.
“I don’t feel anything. Why don’t I feel anything?”
“You will. Right now, you need to take care of yourself. You need to get yourself checked out at the hospital and then get home to Mike and your little girl. Nothing else matters.”
David Trezize had emerged from the shack, rubbing his sore wrist, and stood beside me.
“I know you’re going to write about this,” I said, “but—”
“Hey, I’ve known Cindy since before either of us came to Nantucket, Chief. I’m not going to wreck her marriage for an extra column inch of news story.”
Haden limped up to us. “Nice work, Chief. I need a drink. But I’m not going to take one.”
“Good to hear.”
He would need to know about our suspicions and the raid on his house. But all of that could wait.
After the last helicopter took off, I had orders to give, people to thank, suspects to mirandize and take into custody, inter-departmental rivalries to defuse, and a crime scene to secure. The rest of my afternoon was taken up with getting a cast on my wrist, dealing with the press from New York and Boston. I was short with them, impatient, rattled, and exhausted. Charlie Boyce touched my arm at one point and said gently, “Time to delegate, Chief.”
He was right. I left them and their trusted officers to deal with the Fraker brothers and their lawyers, the families of the kidnap victims, and the press corps, which was swelling by the moment. All I wanted to do was track down my family and let them know I was okay. Miranda and Joe Arbogast had the kids in his ’Sconset house.
Miranda’s response was typical. “Jesus, Henry, I thought we came to Nantucket to shield our children from shit like this. But it just follows you, wherever you go. We’re keeping the kids out here tonight. They need some stability right now.”
I gave them each a long hug and headed back to town. Miranda could be a bitch, but she was a good mother, and she’d feed them a good meal and make sure their teeth were brushed before they went to bed.
Jane was waiting for me when I got home with a necklace of gauze wound below her chin. She gave me a long hug and said, “My knight in shining armor.”
“Well…nothing so important. Maybe…your squire in blue serge?”
She laughed. “I like that so much better! Less clanking.”
But that afternoon on the beach continued to trouble me. I couldn’t get to sleep. My mind kept pinballing through the same cones and columns. They dinged and lit up, and I racked up the points until the ball was back on the flippers and I sent it up into the maze again, and again.
And again:
I was no knight. I was no squire. Could I really claim to be better than the criminals I chased, better than Todd and Sippy, better than corrupt cops like Roy Elkins and Ham Tyler?
I still wanted to kill Fraker. I still wished I had.
Not a good feeling. I worked my way through it. The incident on Coatue beach had been a uniquely extreme situation. Who wouldn’t give in to their blood lust at a moment like that? What kind of man would I be if I had calmly taken Todd Fraker into custody, as if he was nothing worse than a shoplifter? That would have been bizarre, deviant, dissociative. That would have been the real craziness.
And what if I had killed him? The world would not have been in any way diminished. It was like putting down a rabid dog—a public service.
But that was bullshit, and I knew it.
Where did the killing stop? Who made the decisions?
At three in the morning I gave up trying to sleep and went downstairs. My mom was having a cup of tea at the kitchen table.
She glanced up. “Chamomile tea is good when you can’t sleep. I have a pot going.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I walked to the counter and poured myself a mug of the pale yellow brew, awkwardly, one-handed. My wrist still ached under the brand-new cast. I sat down at the table across from her. We were silent for a long time, sipping.
She spoke first. “You’re only human, Hanky. And none of us are down too long from the trees.”
“I would have killed that guy.”
“And it’s keeping you up at night. That’s a good sign.”
We sat and sipped. She reached out and put her hand over mine. “No
one is just one thing.”
When I went back up to bed, Jane was awake. She slipped under my arm when I got under the covers, nuzzled my neck. “Give yourself a break, Chief.”
“Not my specialty.”
“You want to know what I was feeling? Right then, when you were about to shoot him?”
I lifted my head a little to take in her face, sober and wide awake in the moonlight. “Sure.”
“When I heard the gun go off, I was screaming in my mind, ‘YES!’ And then when I realized what Mitch had done and knew you hadn’t killed Todd, I sighed and almost fainted, but it was the same word: YES. I desperately wanted you to kill him at that moment, and I desperately wanted you not to…and Mitch let us have it both ways, both of us. You know? You did it, but it didn’t happen. I watched it, but I didn’t have to see.”
“And now you know I’m a killer.”
“And I’m glad.”
“You take me as I am?”
An amused little squint. “Well. You’re not perfect. But you’re good enough for Nantucket.”
“So sentimental.”
“And I love you.”
Then she rolled on top of me and proved it.
On Saturday night, the gallows on Coatue burned, a vivid torch across the harbor, sending a dense throbbing column of smoke up to the full moon. There was no way to extinguish the blaze, so the fire department just let it burn out. Half the town gathered along the shore to watch, from Dionis to Jetties Beach to the decks of the big houses in Monomoy and Shimmo, Polpis, and Pocomo. The fire was laid carefully and didn’t spread. The investigation was cursory and short-lived. No arrests were made. The blaze remains a mystery.
When Jane came home at dawn on Sunday, I said, “Feel better?”
She eased beside me under the covers. “Much.”
I sniffed her breath. “Who brought the Jameson’s?”
“Billy had a flask.”
Nantucket Penny Page 24
