by Noel Hynd
“Anyone I know?”
“Doubt it.”
Dr. Friedman thought about it, then shrugged. “Well, why not?” he said.
“Look, when you got a million dollar house that you can’t sell, nothing’s going to get much worse. Set fire to it if you want. It’s insured. You’d be doing me a favor.”
Brooks looked at him oddly. It recurred to Friedman that he was talking to a policeman.
“Just kidding,” the physician said quickly. “You know I’m just joking. Right?”
Brooks nodded. Friedman handed him a key. Brooks thanked him and the two men left the house on Milk Street.
Chapter Forty-two
It was early afternoon when Brooks returned. His expert wore a thick black coat and a chain collar and was panting heavily. Brooks had borrowed Boomer from Lieutenant Agannis with the understanding that the Labrador be returned safe and sound within an hour.
Brooks kept the dog on a leash, so he could guide him more securely. Man and beast entered the house on Milk Street without incident. Brooks led the animal through the first floor. The dog’s tail wagged. His mouth was open and his tongue hung. He panted.
Brooks prowled through the kitchen and began opening cabinet doors. He found a cracked saucer that had been left behind. It was a garish green and red, clearly a relic of the 1950s, a cucumber-and-tomato design.
Brooks drew some cold water from the tap and served the dog some water. Then Brooks rinsed the saucer and left it in the sink.
Upstairs was a different story.
The dog hesitated on the staircase. Brooks had to tug at the leash to induce the dog to follow. At the top of the steps Boomer wanted to retreat or sit down again.
“Come on, boy,” Brooks whispered to the dog. “No one’s going to hurt you.” As he spoke, Brooks wondered if he betrayed his own fear, his own anxiety, and whether the dog was reacting to that.
The detective tugged on the leash again. Finally, Boomer followed, though the animal wasn’t happy. Brooks pulled him down the hall. The house was very still. And with daylight waning and the electricity turned off in the building, there were more nuances and shadings to the second floor.
They reached the door to Rachel’s room, the area that had been remodeled. Boomer pulled away. Brooks felt a prickly feeling at the base of his neck. He also suffered from a sense of intrusion, as if he had entered an area where many people had stopped talking and were holding silent.
“Come on,” Brooks said to Boomer. “Just come into the room for a few seconds.”
But whatever Brooks felt, the Labrador felt, too. The dog pulled sharply on the leash.
“What’s the matter, boy?” Brooks asked.
The dog refused to budge. Brooks turned and looked into the empty room. He saw nothing. Yet the feeling on the back of his neck remained.
Were the spirits rising with the approach of night? Did Boomer sense the same thing as he?
Brooks waited for his questions to be answered. He waited for a voice—even the voice—to come from somewhere and provide a solution.
But none came.
“Okay, Boomer,” he said. “That’s enough here.”
The dog seemed to understand, because he turned to go. They went downstairs and piled into Brooks’ car, the dog stationed on the passenger side of the Jeep. They drove back toward town, then the dog let out a whimper when Brooks took a turn that led away from the police station and over toward Cort Street. Brooks wondered if the dog knew where they were going.
Brooks pulled his car into the circular driveway before 17 Cort Street. He turned to the dog.
“What’s the matter, boy?” Brooks asked. “You’ve been here before. Nothing happened last time, right?”
Brooks patted Boomer on the head. He took him by the leash and pulled him out of the car. He led him to the back door of the house. The structure was dark, save one light in the downstairs. And there was a small pile of building supplies that Emmet Hughes, who had finished for the day, had left under the rear landing.
Brooks unlocked the house. As he pushed the door open, he experienced a hard yank on the leash.
The Labrador was pulling wildly back from him. Boomer whimpered and yanked against the collar and the leash. The dog pulled furiously. Brooks had no choice but to back up several paces so that the dog would calm.
“Whoa, whoa,” Brooks said. “What’s the matter, boy? What’s there?”
Boomer knew there was something. And he knew that he didn’t like it. Brooks crouched down near him and patted the dog soothingly, under the chin and along the underside of the chest. Yet the dog’s body was tense and his canine heart was pounding.
A wind, or something, made the back door open further.
Boomer’s ears perked, his eyes went alive and he tried to bolt. Brooks stared at the same spot and saw nothing. He heard nothing. He felt nothing.
But the animal recoiled. Brooks held him firmly by the collar. Boomer pulled back again. First, it was as if there was an unseen boundary that the dog didn’t care to cross. Then it was as if the unseen boundary, or something unseen, was moving toward him.
Brooks glanced at the doorway again, saw nothing, and looked back to the dog, attempting to steady him. The animal went into a frenzy.
The black fur stood up on his back. Boomer started to snarl, teeth visible beneath curled lips. Brooks looked at the animal incredulously and then felt another deep flash of fear. He found himself staring into animal eyes quite different from any he had seen before. Boomer’s gaze beaded upon him. It was wolfish and cunning, gleaming and feral.
Brooks froze. The animal’s snarl rose to a bark and the bark to a bite as Boomer snapped with heavy powerful jaws at Brooks’ arm. The dog got a piece of him, ripping the sleeve of his shirt, teeth tearing at his skin.
Brooks sprung to his feet and hit the lunging dog with a knee, stunning him. Then as the dog lunged a second time, Brooks chopped at him with the side of his hand. When the dog sprung a third time, Brooks caught him again with a knee, sending the animal sprawling backward and tumbling.
But Boomer achieved what he had wanted. He was free from his handler. He turned his tail between his legs. The fur on his back flattened and receded and the dog, its pride and psyche wounded, retreated, dragging the leash as he slinked toward the car.
Brooks felt a deep aching on his arm, accompanied by something warm and wet flowing down his wrist to his palm. He knew it was blood. The dog had bitten him on the back of the arm, just below the elbow. He stepped away from the house and looked at the wound. Boomer had nailed him with three or four teeth, deeply puncturing his flesh.
Brooks applied pressure to the wound by gripping it with his free hand.
He locked the house again.
He walked back to his car. Boomer, the placid amiable old Boomer, was sitting near the Wrangler, as if nothing had happened. Almost apologetically, the dog wagged his tail as Brooks approached.
Brooks leaned down and patted the animal. Then he found the first-aid kit that he always carried in his trunk. He bandaged his wrist and covered the bandage by putting on a windbreaker.
Tim Brooks returned the key to 29 Milk Street to Dr. Friedman. He returned Boomer to Lieutenant Agannis. Then he drove past the parish house of Christ and Holy Trinity and found Reverend Osaro still missing. He then reported to the Emergency Room at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
There, as Brooks sat on an examination table, a physician named Peter Shannon used fifteen stitches to close the wounds to Brooks’ arm. Luckily, there had been no damage to veins or nerves.
Then Dr. Shannon departed and a nurse applied dressing and fresh bandages. She was a woman in her twenties, with reddish hair and a pretty girlish face. Brooks’ eyes settled upon the name tag on her ample left breast. It said she was Marilyn Blake, R.N., B.S.
Marilyn took several minutes at her task. But as she finished, in the corridor outside there was the sound of something smashing, like a plate being dropped. The abrupt noise,
and the nearness of it, made Brooks jump. The nurse jumped as well.
“I don’t know what goes on at this place sometimes,” she said in mild disgust. “Every once in a while something just falls off a table and crashes.”
Brooks’ eyes went to the door. Marilyn looked back to her patient.
“Feel okay?” she asked, examining his wrist.
“It’s better,” Brooks said, moving his forearm, “just from your touch, Marilyn.”
The nurse blushed and smiled prettily. Tim Brooks realized that he was flirting.
Brooks made a fist, then flexed his fingers. “I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Good. I’ll be back in a minute. I want to see if Dr. Shannon is prescribing medication. I’m sure he wants to put you on antibiotics. Can you wait here please?”
Brooks said he could. Marilyn left the room and stopped short. There was a broken dish of some sort just outside the door. She made a tisking sound with her tongue, then quickly found a pan and brush. Brooks watched her sweep up the broken shards of china, white with red and green, with quick efficiency.
“You learn to do everything yourself around here,” she said absently to Brooks. “Housekeeping staff. Where are they when you need them? You’d wait forever.”
Brooks gave her a sympathetic nod. She poured the broken pieces into a waste basket and disappeared again.
In silence, Brooks stared at what she had done. Then, as a realization set in upon him, he bolted to his feet. He moved to the waste basket and reluctantly looked downward, knowing he would confirm his worse suspicions.
He felt a surge in his stomach, like those powerful wings flapping again. He wanted to vomit. The worst part about it was that he was no longer incredulous, no longer surprised. He didn’t even have to reach down to examine the shattered saucer.
He recognized its red-and-green tomato-and-cucumber design. It was the same saucer he had filled with water for Boomer at Milk Street.
Brooks went back to the examining table and sat upon it again.
He suppressed a shudder. “Where are you?” he asked aloud.
The laughter, loud this time, almost as if it were in his ear.
“Very good, my dear swine! At last you can sense my presence!” the presence said.
Brooks, speaking in the empty examining room, replied. “Boomer saw you, didn’t he? Even though I didn’t, the dog saw you.”
“And I, him, my dear pig.”
“You made him go crazy,” Tim said.
“Very easy. A conceit.”
“When will I see you?”
“Soon.”
“When will you kill again?”
“Even sooner.”
“Who will you kill?” Brooks pressed.
“Let us speak of you and the whore-actress. I should think you two might like to go down into the earth in the same box, Timothy. Wouldn’t that be cozy? Do tell me your preference before it’s too late: Rosewood? Pine? And would you like to be side by side or inverted?”
Brooks ignored the question.
“Oh, but lust for her! Admit it! The day will come when you will offer attempt an unspeakable act of carnal knowledge. Admit to me now, my sweet! That’s what you want!”
“Shut up!” Tim snapped.
“Losing it, aren’t you, my dove? I suspect a pine coffin would be best on a policeman’s salary. Nothing fancy for a stupid common working man who lusts for a glamorous tart that he will never have!”
Brooks shouted. “Shut up!”
Insane laughter. Again, from nowhere! Everywhere!
Brooks was on his feet. He slashed at the air with his arms.
“Where are you?” he demanded. “Who are you?”
The voice came to him next with immense clarity. “Henry Flaherty!”
Brooks froze. “Who?” he asked.
Silence.
“Come on. Talk to me!” Brooks said.
More silence.
“Were you a person once?” Brooks demanded. “Recently?”
Still more silence. Ominous and icy.
“Come on!” Brooks finally shouted. “Talk to me! Talk to me again!” Brooks cursed loudly and profanely.
The door flew open. Brooks’ head turned and shot toward it.
He felt a jolt of near panic, intense fear, thinking that the moment of ultimate confrontation was at hand. But in the doorway were the physician and the young nurse. They stood motionless, having heard his shouts.
They stared at their patient.
Wordless. Disapproving. Perplexed. Not comprehending.
They were unable to hear the mad symphony that played in Brooks’ mind.
Brooks heard laughter. Insane laughter. From near, from far. From all around, from nowhere.
From the other side of accepted reality. From beyond the boundaries of normal human imagination.
Laughter that rang in Brooks’ head until the doctor and nurse very cautiously entered the room and sat down near him. The laughter eased.
“You okay, Tim?” the doctor asked.
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
“We heard shouts.”
“Sorry. I’m just angry that I let this happen. Careless of me.”
“Uh huh.”
“Boomer’s a good dog.”
“Yeah,” Dr. Shannon said. “We checked. He’s had all his shots. So you’re lucky. Rabies and distemper are not a problem. But potential infection is, but we can deal with that.”
“Cool.”
The doctor and nurse methodically explained to him the prescriptions they were giving him to control infection in his wrist. They also described the follow-up treatment that the injuries would dictate.
Brooks said nothing and received their guidance without complaint. But the entire time, Dr. Shannon and Nurse Blake looked at Brooks strangely. And the laughter Brooks heard was only a hollow echo resounding in his own recent memory.
Chapter Forty-three
To Tim Brooks, no sight was stranger than George Osaro’s white Plymouth van parked in the driveway before the parish house. Brooks spotted it at about seven P.M. on Sunday evening, August 2.
Brooks pulled his Jeep into Osaro’s driveway, studied the minister’s house for a second, then cut his engine and jumped out.
He went to the front door. It was open. An outside screen door was closed. Brooks knocked.
Osaro’s voice replied from within. “Who’s that?”
“George? Is that you?”
There was a silence and Brooks waited. A few seconds later, the minister appeared from a back room, visible through the screen, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of old khakis.
“Hello, Timmy,” Osaro said from within. “What’s the good word?” Osaro grinned. “Miss me?”
“Well, I was wondering…” Brooks said. “Disappeared without a trace. No appointments. No forwarding number.”
“Whoa,” Osaro said. “Talk to me. Come on in.”
“Open the door and I will.”
“It already is open,” Osaro said. “Kick it in. See if I care.”
Brooks grinned and entered the minister’s house. He had been there before many times and the house was more depressing with each visit. Osaro was no one’s idea of an efficient housekeeper. Books and magazines remained stacked on any available surface in the living areas. Osaro’s basketball shoes and running equipment, even a torn jersey from Harvard, lay askew on the floor of the front alcove. The furniture was worn, tables were dusty, lamp shades were crooked and a pair of coffee cups sat in the living room, unmoved since before Osaro’s disappearance.
Some might have taken all this as an example of a devout non-materialist who gave little thought to his surroundings. Brooks saw things differently, sensing an air of need and desolation prevailing over comfort.
Brooks followed the minister to what passed for a den. Osaro dropped himself into a chair. “Everyone claims to be surprised that I was gone. Didn’t know where I was,” he said.
“I drove by the church. And I pa
ssed by the house several times,” Brooks said.
“Yeah, I’m sure you did. That’s what everyone says.” Osaro ran his hand through his dark hair. “Did anyone think of phoning me at home, however? Or at my cell phone? No-o-o-o. Apparently not. If anyone had, the island’s greatest mystery would have been solved.”
Osaro then reached to a home answering machine. He pushed a button. It played a message in his voice, explaining he was going to Boston for three days. It gave a cell phone number at which he could be reached.
“Happy?” Osaro asked.
Brooks sighed sheepishly. “No, I never thought to call your home number,” he admitted. “And I didn’t know you had a cell phone.”
“That’s because you never asked and I never told you. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t have called it. Some detective you are. Did you ever have trouble finding your butt from your elbow?”
“Every day,” Brooks said.
“Figures. You and everyone else on the island. Next time I’ll get an eight hundred number and put it on a billboard out front. How’s that?”
“What were you doing in Boston?” Brooks asked.
Osaro looked at his friend for several seconds. Then he yawned. Brooks noticed the minister did indeed look very tired. Or worried. Or depressed. Or some nasty combination of the three creating a pallor that was indicative of something less than robust health.
“Ah, whatever, Timmy,” Osaro said. “Why should I talk about it?”
Brooks was preparing a response when Osaro rose. He trudged to the next room in the house, which was the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and drew out two long-necked beers. A bottle of Budweiser and a bottle of Labatt’s. “What’ll it be, copper? Red or blue?” he asked. “I’m out of Kirin or Asahi. I’d get you a Narragansett which would be more in keeping with your jagged-fingernail blue-collar roots but I can’t find it anymore.”
“Have you looked?”
“No. However there’s a brewery down in Connecticut that makes a beer called ‘Hooker.’ Know what their slogan is? ‘Get Caught With a Hooker.’ I like that, with its overt and brazen display of contempt for prevailing normal standards.”
