Vineyard Stalker

by Philip R. Craig

  I drove to Oak Bluffs and went into the state police office on Temahigan Avenue as Olive Otero came out of a back room. We greeted one another with a friendliness that still seemed strange after our years of bickering. I gave her a set of the photos and two extra copies of my favorite photo of the vandal, and said, “These are computer-enhanced pictures of the photo Dom got from me this morning. You ever see this guy?”

  She studied the photo. “Can’t say I have, but can’t say I haven’t. There’s something about him looks familiar, but he’s got one of those faces that you see everywhere. You know what I mean?”

  I did. There are certain facial shapes that appear over and over. Some movie actors have them. There’s a James Dean face, a Marlon Brando face, a Marilyn Monroe face. You see them on regular people fairly often. The vandal’s face was a variation of a young Paul Newman’s. I wondered if Paul knew his face was archetypal.

  “I’ll check our files and the computer and see if we can ID this guy,” said Olive. “For some reason I think of Boston when I look at him. I’m not sure why. You used to work in Boston. Do you recognize him?”

  “Olive, I left the Boston PD twenty years ago. The lowlifes I knew then are all at least as old as I am now. This guy was in diapers when I wore blue.”

  “Just asking,” said Olive. “Well, maybe Dom will recognize him. I’ll let you know if I learn anything.” She paused, then said, “You be careful, J.W. We’ve got vandalism and a probable murder on our hands. Someone is playing a very rough game and you’re at least on the cusp of it.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open and my ears up,” I said.

  I left the station and drove to the hospital, which was only a block away. In the ER, where Zee usually works, I learned that Babs Carson was being kept overnight so they could monitor her condition. They preferred that she didn’t have visitors.

  As I was leaving I met Robert Chadwick hurrying in. He gave me a quick nod and trotted right by. I paused in the doorway long enough to hear him ask about Babs Carson. His voice was full of concern. I turned back and went to him.

  12

  Chadwick, too, had been refused admission to Babs Carson’s room. As he turned, frowning, from the desk, I said, “I came to visit her, but I guess we’ll both have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “They should let me see her,” he said in a hollow voice. “She needs to have a friend by her side. She must be devastated. Poor Melissa. My God!”

  “I don’t want to intrude on you,” I said, “but I’d like to show you a photograph. It may be related to Melissa’s death. Let’s step outside.”

  “All right,” he said in his faraway voice. “I guess…” I never learned what he guessed because his voice faded as he followed me out the door.

  “This is a cleaned-up version of the photo I showed you yesterday,” I said, handing him a copy. “He’s one of the vandals we discussed. Do you know him?”

  He stared dully at the picture and shook his head. “No. What’s he got to do with Melissa’s death?”

  “Maybe nothing, but he committed violence at Roland Nunes’s house earlier and Melissa visited there last evening. There may be a link. Maybe she saw him lurking there or maybe he killed her as a final warning to Nunes.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t he just go ahead and kill Nunes and be done with it? Why kill Melissa if Nunes was his target?”

  “I don’t even know if this guy was involved with Melissa’s death, but I’d like to know who he is. Will you show this photo to Babs tomorrow, if they let you in to see her? Tell her it’s the vandal I discussed with her yesterday and ask if she’s seen him.”

  “All right.” He put the photo in his pocket so mechanically that I wasn’t sure he’d remember he even had it. “Poor Babs,” he said. “Why won’t they let me see her?”

  “Go back in and ask to speak with her doctor,” I said. “Tell them you’re her neighbor and friend and that she has no family on the island. The doctor may give permission for you to visit.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I’ll do that right now.” He turned and hurried back into the hospital.

  I suspected that he was in love and hoped that he’d be allowed to see her. Both of them needed to comfort and be comforted during this bad time.

  Melissa Carson’s face and form floated through my memory and I remembered the lightness of her footfall and the way I’d liked her cheerful outrageousness and intelligence. It vexed me to think of her now dead and lying primly on a cold table.

  I drove to the Edgartown–West Tisbury Road and followed it west until I came to the spot where it crossed the stream that ran through Nunes’s place and where the path parallel to the stream ended. I parked there and spent some time going to every nearby house and asking if anyone had seen the man in the photograph. No one had. I asked if anyone had noticed a parked car or any activity at the end of the path during the night. No one had, but most had seen cars parked there during the day when walkers liked to use the path. I got a lot of curious looks and questions that I answered by saying no I wasn’t involved in the police investigation of Melissa Carson’s death but that I’d been hired to investigate some vandalism in the neighborhood and that the police might be asking them the same questions I was asking.

  By the time I’d visited the last house, I was tired and little wiser than I’d been before. All I was certain of was that the vandals hadn’t driven to the path in a car; otherwise someone surely would have noticed it. They’d, therefore, come by foot or bike or had been dropped off and picked up again by an associate who’d not lingered in the area.

  I walked up the path, hearing the brook laugh and gurgle off to my right, and looked for something, anything, that might be useful to me. But I found nothing. There were enough footprints on the ground to show that a lot of people had used the path in the past few days, probably to link up to the ancient way that led on into the state forest. I didn’t see the single, clear, unique shoeprint that would prove that the villain and only the villain had been there the night of Melissa’s death. Rats.

  I walked out into Nunes’s meadow. His cabin and shed looked small and forsaken. No one was in sight. I crossed meadow and stream and followed the ancient way into the forest. Beneath my feet the leaves and pine needles made a soft walkway. Around me a gentle wind sighed through the trees. Now and then I heard a birdcall and wished, not for the first time, that I knew what I was listening to, for in spite of my years on the island I’d never really become a birder.

  I thought of Bonzo, my friend—who had been a promising lad before bad acid had reduced his brain to that of a child—and who now worked at the Fireside Bar cleaning the floor and tables and bringing beer and booze up from the basement. Bonzo’s great loves were fishing and birdsong. He had tapes of songs that he’d recorded himself, using mikes he’d set up on beaches, and in bushes, meadows and forests. He knew the call and music of every bird on the island. If he was here, he could tell me what I was hearing. Good old Bonzo. I should go by the Fireside and have a Sam Adams and say hello.

  Bonzo and beer. I stopped in my tracks, remembering the vandal’s last words: “Come on,” he’d said to his companion. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

  There are a lot of bars and liquor stores on Martha’s Vineyard but they’re all in the island’s two wet towns, Edgartown and Oak Bluffs. If you’re going to buy your friend a beer, you can only do it in those two towns.

  I turned and walked back to my truck, glancing at my watch and noting with surprise that it was only noon. I’d been so busy since getting Carole Cohen’s phone call that it seemed more time had surely passed. A lot of the bars would be open for luncheon patrons, so I had a chance to both eat and ask questions.

  I drove to Edgartown and managed to find a seat at the bar in the Newes from America, a good pub on Kelly Street. I ordered a Sam Adams and a hot pastrami sandwich and asked the bartender if a couple of guys wearing dark clothes had come in for beer just before closing time the night before las
t. He said he didn’t know because he hadn’t been on that night, but he thought one of the waitresses now bustling between tables had been. When he got her attention, she came to the bar and I put my question to her. She thought back and shook her head.

  “The only men in here just before closing were tourists wearing summer clothes. No men in black. You looking for Johnny Cash or the Blues Brothers, J.W.? They’re not around anymore, in case you hadn’t heard.”

  “I heard,” I said. “I’m looking for two other guys, but all I know about them is that fairly late, the night before last, they were wearing dark clothes and were planning to have a beer. I’d like to talk with them. If you have any pals who were slinging booze or food in other places last night, will you ask them if they saw a couple guys like that?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “A toothy grin and a hearty thank-you.”

  “That’s more than I get from a lot of people. Okay, I’ll ask around and let you know. Oops, I gotta go. Say hi to Zee.”

  She went away and when I’d finished my beer and sandwich, so did I.

  For the next two hours I went from bar to bar and liquor store to liquor store in Edgartown and got nothing for my troubles other than an increasing certainty that I’d have to come back that evening and make the rounds again, this time talking to the people on the after-dinner shift.

  It was midafternoon when I parked in Oak Bluffs and began working my way up Circuit Avenue asking my same question and getting no useful answers.

  Bonzo was pushing a broom in the Fireside. The place was fairly empty, so I managed a few minutes with him while I sat at the bar and had another Sam Adams.

  “Jeez, no, J.W.,” he said after furrowing his brow and casting his thin thoughts back to the night before last. “I don’t remember seeing no guys like that, and I was here past closing time because, you know, I got to keep things clean as a whistle so I stay here and work after we close up.” He nodded seriously. “It’s summer, you know, and we’re busy, busy every night. Why you want to see these guys, J.W.?”

  “I just want to talk with them. If two guys like that come in, will you let me know?”

  “Sure, J.W.” His dim eyes brightened. “Say, you want me to have them call you?”

  “No, no. I want to surprise them. You just let me know they’re here.”

  His smile was bright. “Sure, J.W. I can do that. I like surprises. They’re fun! You going to have a party?”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “If you have one, can I come?”

  “Sure, Bonzo. If we have one, you can come.”

  He clapped his hands in happiness.

  Good old Bonzo.

  I worked my way up Circuit, then followed Kennebec back down to the harbor. No one on duty in the bars and liquor stores had seen the two men.

  It’s said that a true scholar must have a love of drudgery. Similarly, a lot of successful police work has nothing to do with brilliance, but is the result of patient plodding and prodding. Thus, I wasn’t surprised when, at the end of my day, I hadn’t learned anything useful.

  At home, the cats and I relaxed together on the balcony, where I sipped a vodka on the rocks and looked out over our garden, over Sengekontacket Pond, and over the barrier beach where cars were departing after their owners had enjoyed another sunny, Vineyard day in sand and small surf. Beyond the beach, in Nantucket Sound, white sails moved across the wind and the white wakes of power boats drew lines over the blue water as their skippers headed for harbor.

  As far as those happy people were concerned, it was the close of another beautiful day. Although domed by the same warm sun and blue sky, Babs Carson’s day held no beauty at all. I hoped that Rob Chadwick had gotten to see her.

  I was very conscious of how far removed I was from my years of bachelorhood before I’d met Zee, and found it almost impossible to believe I’d been happy before my marriage. I put out an arm, but of course Zee was not sitting beside me. Oliver Underfoot and Velcro, lying nearby in the evening sunlight, glanced up at me with veiled cat eyes and said nothing.

  I thought about Roland Nunes living alone for thirty years, seemingly content to do so, and I wondered if he had made his life an atonement for the killing he had done in war. I knew that I couldn’t live such a life, that I’d need companionship other than my own, that I was not made to be a monk. I thought of Melissa and the fragrance of lavender and was sad for both her and Nunes.

  Downstairs the phone rang and kept on ringing. When I got to it, John Skye was at the other end of the line.

  “I just heard from George Faulk,” he said. “There was strychnine in that cat food. I think you should contact the police right away. You’ve gotten involved with some evil people.”

  I felt a jolt in my psyche, for I’d been hoping that my suspicions were wrong. I said, “Ask him to fax his analysis to you right away, and to secure that cat food as possible evidence in a criminal investigation. I’ll come over now and get the fax and take it to Dom Agganis.”

  I hung up, full of that anger and fear most people feel toward the killers and mutilators of animals. Cruelty to humans is occasionally understandable and even forgivable, but cruelty to animals somehow seems beyond redemption. The argument of a distant book flashed through my mind: that children who tortured cats, like fire starters and some bed-wetters, often grew up to be criminals, and I wondered if the vandals had torn the wings off flies for youthful sport.

  I finished my drink and drove to John Skye’s farm. He met me with a frown and handed me the fax he’d just received.

  “I don’t like this business,” he said. “I think you should get out of it before something else happens.”

  “You may be right. I’ll take this up to Dom, and he can decide what to do with it.”

  “Good. The police are the people to be handling this whole affair. You go home and clean house. Zee’ll be back in a couple of days.”

  “My house is always clean,” I said, feigning shocked surprise. “Well, almost always.” I thanked him for his help and drove to the state police station.

  There I found both Dom and Olive looking at photographs of known perps. I gave them George Faulk’s fax and told them that Faulk had secured the cat food as possible evidence.

  Dom read the fax without expression. When you’ve been a cop as long as Dom has, it takes a lot to shock you. Olive read the fax and her lips twisted. She muttered a nasty word.

  “There’s another thing,” I said, and told them about remembering the one vandal’s offer to buy the other a beer, and about my afternoon travels to bars and liquor stores.

  “We can get help from the Edgartown and Oak Bluffs police to chase that lead,” said Dom. “It’s a long shot, but something may come of it. Do me a favor and don’t go back to talk with bartenders and waiters tonight. Leave that to us.”

  I pointed at the pile of mug shots. “I guess you haven’t ID’d my prowler yet?”

  “Not yet, but the day isn’t over. You have any other tidbits for us to chew on?”

  “No. You have them all. Do you think the vandal and the murder are related?”

  “Time will tell. Go home and clean house. Your wife will be home soon and you can surprise her.”

  Where was all this messy house stuff coming from? Just because I was batching for a week didn’t mean I was a slob. Should my feelings be hurt?

  I went home and had supper. As I was rinsing and stacking the last of the dishes in the drainer the telephone rang.

  The voice on the other end sounded faintly familiar.

  “Is this Mr. Jefferson W. Jackson?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re snooping too much for your own good. Stop it. If you don’t, the next time I shoot you I’ll use real bullets. I know where you live.”

  “I’d like to talk with you,” I said, but the phone clicked and buzzed in my ear.

  13

  I felt cold and less than human when I hung up the phone. The prowler—maybe t
he killer—knew much about me but I knew little about him. One thing I did know was that someone I’d talked to had told him, deliberately or accidentally, that I was looking for him and his companion in crime, and that he wanted to deflect the heat. Another was that he was willing to try threats before actually killing either me or Roland Nunes.

  Melissa Carson was another matter; if she’d been murdered, it was apparently by someone who hadn’t hesitated at all. That made me wonder if there was any link between her death and the acts of the vandals, or whether, perhaps, they were professionals and Melissa’s killer was an amateur.

  Professionals usually don’t kill people without good reason (money being one such good reason), because they know that killings bring cops and that cops are a real danger to them. When they do kill they try to do it carefully so that they’ll not be suspects or will have good alibis. Amateur killers, on the other hand, either don’t believe they can get caught or don’t think about that possibility at all and make stupid mistakes from the word go.

  Melissa’s body had been found at the end of the ancient way leading to Nunes’s house. If she’d been killed there, it was surely the act of an amateur because no professional would have run the risk of being seen killing her beside the road. On the other hand, maybe she’d been killed somewhere else and her body had been dumped there for reasons known only to the killer. In either case, the location of the body seemed possibly significant because, if nothing else, it drew attention to Nunes, who was already the focus of interest for the prowlers and others who might want him gone.

  I needed to know what the Medical Examiner had to say about Melissa’s death, but I wasn’t about to get that information tonight, so I got my old police .38 out of the gun case, put it in my belt, and, ignoring Dom Agganis’s advice, went out to talk to night-shift people in the pubs and liquor stores.