by Lanyon, Josh
Paul groaned. “Why do people always say that? Everyone is different when they’re younger. Nobody is born a crotchety old fart.” Studying Finn’s profile, he asked reluctantly, “Different how?”
“Happier. Softer. Pretty.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“I didn’t know her well, but she and Uncle Tom have been friends for years. She used to babysit Con—I didn’t know her then, naturally, but she was always crazy about him. They’re third or fourth cousins, I think.”
“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Arkansas anymore.”
“I don’t mean that way. She never married, never had kids of her own. Actually, I always thought those art lessons were more about the way she liked Uncle Tom than her really wanting to become a painter.”
“Sacrilege. I thought it was old Barnaby she had a thing for?”
“She did. Well, I mean…I have no idea. What do kids know? She might have been sweet on Barnaby or he might have been sweet on her.”
“As fascinating as Miss Minton’s love life is, where to now?”
Finn said slowly, “The lighthouse.”
“I think so, yeah.”
There were a few alarming seconds while the car’s tires spun in the mud, but then they gained traction and were on the road once more, proceeding with great caution through the white nothingness.
“For the record, I hate driving in this,” Paul said.
Finn nodded absently.
“The fact that she didn’t see anyone but Con that day doesn’t mean that no one else went up to The Birches,” Paul said when Finn’s silence persisted. “They could have gone in the back way. We didn’t talk to Ezra or whatever his name is.”
“Hiram.”
“Right. Maybe he saw someone. Or maybe she missed them. Him.”
“Maybe.”
The car bounced along the uneven track, Paul accelerating as the mist thinned out in patches. “If you think about it,” he said, “it’s kind of hard to believe that someone would simply walk up and shove Fitch off the tower, and then what? Scrape him off the rocks and hide him under a bush?”
Finn rubbed his forehead, smoothing away the little ache in his temple.
“True. To really hide a body you’d either have to weight it down and dump it in the ocean or dig a grave deep enough that no one would accidentally uncover it.”
“If he was dumped in the ocean three years ago, we’re wasting our time.”
“I know.”
“Obviously, if he was killed at the lighthouse, whoever did it couldn’t take a chance on moving a body around in broad daylight. That’s what we think, right? That he was killed in broad daylight?”
“Yes. No one seems to have seen him after he and Con parted ways.”
“Which leads me to wonder—and you won’t like this—how could anyone know he’d be up there?”
Finn sighed. “Either it was Con, and he killed Fitch when he hit him—which I don’t believe—or it was someone who was maybe following Fitch?” He said slowly, working it out, “Or maybe it was someone Fitch had originally planned to meet? Because I remember that night Con was saying to me that it hadn’t been planned, that it hadn’t been arranged, it had just happened. That he’d actually come up to the lighthouse to find me because I was supposed to be sketching there that day.”
Paul’s eyes were trained on the road ahead. He grunted. “Not bad.”
“Here, you’ve missed the turn.”
Paul braked sharply, reversed, and turned off the road leading up to the lighthouse.
“So…you think Fitch arranged to meet this person, but Con showed up first, and Fitch grabbed the opportunity as it presented itself? Yeah, I can see that. He’d enjoy rubbing someone’s nose in it.”
Finn shot him a sideways look and said nothing.
“It could have been someone who was there for another reason, though.” Paul spoke meditatively, “Someone who hiked up there for the view or to sketch…”
Finn’s stomach did an unpleasant flip-flop.
Paul rambled cheerfully on. “Maybe this person had an innocent reason for being there but went a little crazy when he saw what was happening. Maybe he pretended to walk away and hid, and when Con left, he came back and killed Fitch. Because it seems to me that whoever killed Fitch must have been someone Fitch wasn’t afraid of.”
“Fitch wasn’t afraid of anyone.”
“No. He wasn’t.”
Finn added, “And I didn’t come back and kill him. It happened exactly like I said it did.”
Paul chuckled. “I never doubted you. Here we are.” The lighthouse swung suddenly into the windshield’s view, seeming to loom up out of the mist.
They took their flashlights and jackets, got out of the car, and stood staring up at the white tower. A gull appeared out of the mist, crying eerily and disappearing once more.
Paul said, “Let’s put our emotions aside for a sec and look at this logically. If Fitch was killed here, then there’s a good chance he’s buried here. Somewhere. I can’t see anyone taking the risk of moving a body very far.”
“I can’t either.”
“Could he be buried inside? Maybe put into a wall or stuck under the flooring?”
It took Finn a moment to control his voice. “I guess that’s what we’re going to find out.”
Without further discussion, they went into the light keeper’s dwelling. In silence that seemed to grow heavier with each passing minute, they moved around the small residence, checking the empty built-in closets and cupboards, pounding against the walls, which all seemed perfectly solid. The wind picked up, whistling mournfully through the boards across the window, moaning down the chimney. Far, far beneath their feet was the slow, distant pound of the surf hitting the cliffs in phantom heartbeat.
“We should have brought shovels,” Paul said.
“That would have gone over well. There’s no sense upsetting people if we don’t need to.” Finn moved the flashlight over the broken flooring.
“You mean if we don’t find anything?”
Finn studied the moldering earth beneath the broken patches of boards. Yes, Paul was right, they should have brought shovels.
Paul said shortly, “That is what you mean, right? If we don’t find anything, you’re not going to let them cover this up? You’re not going to let them get away with murder?”
Finn stared across the room at Paul’s weirdly shadowed face. “Them?”
“Yes, them. All of them. Are you going to call the police or not? Or do I need to do it?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“If you killed him…then I understand. I can forgive it. But if it wasn’t you—”
“I told you I didn’t kill Fitch.”
Paul lifted a negligent shoulder.
“I’m not lying.” Finn’s flare of temper caught even him off guard. “And I’m not going to let anyone get away with anything, but you’re not making the call on this. And I’m not doing anything until I’ve thought it through. Until I know what I’m dealing with. And one of the things I don’t understand is why the hell you’re so hot to see Fitch get justice. You hated him.”
“I loved him!”
“You loved him? You sued him.”
The beam of Finn’s flashlight caught tears glittering on Paul’s cheeks. “So what? I was angry and bitter—and jealous, I admit that. But I never stopped loving him. Even when I hated him.”
Finn opened and then closed his mouth. Finally he managed, “Really? Well, you’ve hid it pretty well all this time.”
“What do you know about it? You’ve been moping over Conway Twitty for three years. Which ought to tell you something right there, since I’m pretty sure you thought you hated him.”
That struck a little too close to home. Finn said, “In that case, and since you’re so quick to scream for justice, where the hell were you on the eighteenth of August three years ago?”
Paul gasped as though mortally struck. Tea
rs gave way to astonishment and then outrage. “What are you saying to me?”
“I’m saying…you’re so quick to want to call the cops, fine. Only they’re going to ask you where you were three years ago—especially since, according to you, you were still in love with Fitch. It was one thing when you were an interested bystander, but now you’re a potential suspect.”
“You…bitch!”
“Hey”—Finn shrugged—“I’m just pointing out the obvious. You’re a suspect here too. So before we go flying off to drag the state police into this, I suggest we figure out exactly what we’re dealing with. Because we’re both going to be very unpopular if it turns out Fitch isn’t dead. And if he is dead, we’re going to be even more unpopular—not to mention one of us might end up getting arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.”
Paul stood very still. “You’re turning this around on me to protect Carlyle. He’s the only one who could have done this and you know it.”
“Do you have an alibi or not?”
“I don’t know! I don’t remember where I was three years ago. I might have an alibi. When I get home, I’ll check!”
“Great. In the meantime, let’s keep our mouths shut till we know something for sure. Because right now we don’t know anything. We don’t even have a body.”
“Well, why don’t I go get a couple of shovels?” Paul offered with acid sweetness. He stared challengingly at Finn.
Finn stared back. “All right,” he said finally. “Why don’t you?”
“Do you mean that?”
“Of course I mean it. I already told you I—” He shook his head wearily. “Just…try not to let anyone see you. They’re going to be very upset if they think—”
“Give me credit for some discretion,” Paul said. He propped his flashlight on one of the window shelves and picked his way across the broken flooring.
Finn forced himself to stay where he stood as he heard the car engine fade away. Blackness was not the absence of color. If you mixed every color together, what did you get? You got black. Close enough. So there was nothing to fear in the darkness. No reason to stand here with his heart in overdrive and sweat breaking out over his body, because nothing in the darkness could hurt him. And even if there was something buried in the soft, wet square of ground next to his foot, it could not be Fitch. It was not big enough for Fitch.
He forced himself to stand there for another wrenching second or two, and then he crossed the broken floor and stepped outside. The fog had mostly dissipated; the rain was coming down in a fine misting. But overhead, the sky was heavy and dark with the promise of worse weather, and the sea looked black.
He took a couple of deep lungfuls of oxygen, and then he forced himself back into the cottage. The cottage door swung restlessly back and forth on its creaking hinges, and he propped it open with a large flat rock.
Fresh air, daylight. What more could he ask? Grimly, he took his cane and began to poke it into the soft dirt near the far corner of the house where he thought he had seen an unnatural indentation in the bare earth. The ground was very soft. The tip of the cane slid in deep and struck something—which then gave.
He straightened up, stood motionless, looked to the doorway. It stood open and empty. The door tugged in the wind, bouncing against the rock anchoring it.
Finn looked down at the square of damp earth.
An old rug?
It hadn’t sounded like that. He lowered himself carefully, kneeling awkwardly, scraping at the thing buried in the soft, damp earth.
After a time he stopped, looked around for something else to use as a shovel. He spotted a broken piece of flooring and grabbed that, carving and scraping, digging away as ferociously as a terrier despite the uneasy feeling crawling down his spine. It had to be the cold of the cottage working its way into his bones; he gritted his jaw against the incipient chatter of teeth.
“It’s a suitcase,” he got out, and the sound of his own voice startled him.
He dug more quickly, the wood making a rough whisper against the cloth of the suitcase, and then the suitcase was free and he used all his strength to drag it out of the hole in the floor. He braced a hand against the wall and pulled himself up again.
Hauling the suitcase out into the soft, rainy mist, he laid it on the patchy grass and brushed away rust and mud, struggling to yank the zipper open. The smell of rotted material and mildew wafted up. Inside were a jumble of clothes and odds and ends. Finn recognized the moldy remains of a black checked shirt, a moss green sweater, red briefs, the cotton discolored, the elastic deteriorated.
He touched the shirt—his own. Fitch had borrowed it one day, and Finn had never thought of it since.
At last he closed the suitcase lid and sat there, shaking a little with cold and exhaustion and nerves. He had not really, entirely believed it until now, but there could be no doubt.
Fitch was dead. Murdered.
He was not sure how much time had passed by the time it occurred to him that Fitch had had two suitcases. That meant the other must still lie in the cottage in another corner of wet, cushioning earth.
He forced himself back on his feet and back into the pitchy interior of the cottage. Was it darker than before or was that his overactive imagination?
Not so overactive as it turned out.
Finding his discarded cane, he began to poke again in the spongy sections of bare earth.
From outside came the rumble of thunder. He ignored it, jabbing the metal tip of the walking stick into the moldering earth. It took a while, but on the opposite side of the room, near the doorway leading to the light tower, again he struck something in the soil.
And as he did, a blast of wind, harder than the previous gusts, slammed shut the door to the cottage.
His heart seemed to stop. And then, after a moment of utter, abject, paralyzed fear, it jump-started, speeding back into life.
Finn began to feel his way across the uneven boards, reminding himself all the while that he had a flashlight—two flashlights, for Paul’s still shone from the window shelf—and that his fear was an irrational, foolish thing.
Except that wasn’t right. Maybe there wasn’t anything in the darkness to fear, but Fitch had been murdered—and that murderer could only be one of a handful of people, and they were all still on this island.
He was still absorbing the full shock of that when the cottage door was dragged open again. Instinctively, Finn turned off his flashlight as a black outline filled the doorway.
“Finn?” Con called out.
Chapter Nine
Silently, instinctively, Finn moved back, slipping through the doorway that led to the tower. Watery light from the windows high, high above moved in the base of the tower-like ghosts.
“Who’s in here?” Con called.
Finn didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t breathe. He could hear Con stepping carefully; hear the crunch of his shoes on broken concrete and splintered wood. Con was coming his way. Soundlessly, he crept behind the stairwell, hiding in the shadows. He knew the impulse telling him to climb was a false one. If he went up the stairs he would be trapped, and yet everything in him was clamoring for light and air and distance from the threat coming steadily toward him.
If he could stay perfectly silent, perfectly still…Con might leave. Might see the tire tracks in the yard and assume that whoever had been at the lamp had come and gone.
But no. The suitcase was still in the yard. He would see it, surely? Would he believe that they had left it behind? Doubtful.
Con was not leaving. Finn could see the golden circle of Paul’s flashlight beam coming toward the tower door ahead of Con’s footsteps.
Finn’s nerve broke and he went for the staircase, trying for silence but needing to move.
“Finn, you’re scaring the hell out of me,” Con said, and Finn was so startled he misstepped and came down hard on the staircase, which clanged noisily—no concealing that. In any case, for a red wash of an instant he was in too much pain to worry abo
ut it. His cane slithered and fell through the railing, hitting the wall of the tower as it dropped to the ground.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow move into the tower—caught briefly in the blue light from above.
“Finn?”
“Here,” he got out. Dimly, it occurred to him that he had resolved his fear of Con. It had been that disarming Finn, you’re scaring the hell out of me.
“Jesus. What happened?” And Con was at the stairs and bending over him. “How far did you fall?”
“I didn’t. Exactly. Just came down wrong.”
Con was running hands over him, checking for broken bones. His fingers were cold, his breath warm. He smelled like rain and aftershave.
“I’m okay,” Finn said.
“Are you sure? You could have killed yourself.”
He opened his mouth to reiterate that he hadn’t been far up the staircase, but stopped. He didn’t want Con to know he had tried to run from him. He felt stupid for his earlier fear. He had known in his heart Con couldn’t be a killer, and yet a part of him had persisted in doubting. Partly it had been the horror of finding Fitch’s suitcase, having his worst fears confirmed. Partly, though, he had feared Con.
Grabbing onto the railing, he drew himself up. Con’s hand brushed his back, offering support or maybe reassuring himself that Finn was still in one piece. “You’re sure?”
Even in that eerie light he could feel Con’s gaze. He met it and couldn’t look away. “I’m sure.” It was mostly embarrassing now. Had he fallen down the stairs it would have been different—fatally different, probably.
“What in the name of Christ were you doing?”
“I needed the light,” he said.
“Finn, sugar…” Con said, and there was a wealth of emotion in his voice that Finn couldn’t understand. Con’s head bent, his mouth covered Finn’s, and he kissed him. It was a strange kiss, though. Strangely tender. Strangely restrained. But maybe that wasn’t so strange given everything else.
Finn kissed back, tentatively. How long had he waited for this? No, that was wrong. He hadn’t waited. Hadn’t anticipated or hoped. Hadn’t let himself think about it all—because he had believed there was no chance of it ever again. But he had not forgotten. Not forgotten Con’s taste or scent or feel. He’d forgotten nothing—and nothing had changed. Finn was no longer tentative—and neither was Con. Suddenly it was hot and sweet and all the colors of the rainbow.
