Everyone was listening now, and pretending not to.
“Jesus. What are you going to do?” asked Billy.
“I don’t know. But I know what somebody should do. If he’s dead the estate sells the house and everybody gets paid. Fuck, man, I’d kill him for free. If I had the guts. I’ll tell you something, though. If someone’s gonna do it, they better do it soon. His bags are packed. He’s splitting. I’m serious, man. He’s outta here. And once he’s gone, forget about it. We’re all screwed.”
Mike turned to the bartender. “Two more, Larry. We really need ’em right now.”
Mike put a ten on the bar, grabbed the mugs of stout and gave one to Billy. They threaded their way back to the pool table, angry conversation igniting behind them.
“Sounds like a lynch mob,” Mike said.
Billy took a long swig and set his glass down listening appreciatively. “Yes sir,” he said after a moment or two. “Our work here is done.”
***
An hour later, Mike Henderson stood in his living room, staring down at his wife’s note. It had been scrawled in a hurry. It was terse and uninformative. Cindy was in New York. She had to “get away.” She had “a lot to think about” and “decisions to make alone.”
He had a pretty good idea what those decisions were—keep her life with Mike or discard it, baby and all. He knew Cindy would be at her parents’ apartment. They hated him. When she had asked them to pay for the wedding her mother had said, “We’ll pay for the divorce.” That was probably what they were discussing today—the most cost-effective way to rid themselves of the loser they had warned her against, in vain.
Conrad Parrish, Cindy’s father, was a brain surgeon with an unabashed God complex: “I hold fate in my hands, Mike,” he had announced one night after too many sea breezes. “I reach into the pulsing heart of creation and confront the mystery of life and death, every day. I’m God’s good right hand: his mechanic. I correct his mistakes. That’s quite a feeling. Savages would build shrines to me: the white man with the knife who slices their flesh apart and heals their sickness. And I’ll tell you something. Those pygmies wouldn’t be far off.”
“You’re insane,” Mike had muttered.
The night had gone downhill from there.
Mike had no desire to call Conrad Parrish at this hour, frantically searching for Cindy, begging him for a clue to his daughter’s whereabouts.
So he sat in his bathrobe, watching The Weather Channel. The forecasts were inaccurate, sometimes ludicrously so, but he enjoyed them anyway. He liked the radar graphics; he liked watching the great green masses closing in on the island, while the self-important anchors made high drama out of scattered showers or a dusting of snow. They were naming ordinary storms now—“Winter Storm Iago.” What was next? “Summer Drizzle Amelia”? It was insulting to hurricanes—and their victims. Mike especially loathed the brazen way the forecasts changed: a week of rain became a week of sunshine with no acknowledgement or apology. Not even an “oops” or a blush. Just a radically different forecast as if they’d been saying it all along.
They needed their illusions, just like he did. His happy marriage, his growing business, they were as bogus as the weather maps.
He heard his back door open, and Tanya Kriel walked into the room. She was unzipping a bulky parka, pulling off a knitted watch cap that glittered with snow. She squinted down at him.
“You look exhausted. Did you sleep at all?”
He glanced up. “Cindy’s gone.”
She let the coat drop, and twisted out of her thermal underwear T-shirt.
“Good. I need to be alone with you this morning.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Choices
Mike was inside Tanya Kriel when the phone rang. He knew who it was instantly and his mind spun through array of possible responses: let the machine pick it up? At almost two in the morning? If he didn’t answer the phone that would only lead to more questions and confrontations. Answer it and act as if she had just awakened him? But he couldn’t fool Cindy and he knew it. He could just hear her: “Why the fake ‘sleepyhead’ stuff? Is someone there with you?”
The phone rang again. It seized him up inside like a police siren, like the flashers in his rearview mirror. Tanya was staring up at him. He had lifted himself off her by the full extension of his arms. He looked like he was doing some kind of stretch in yoga class. He looked down at her face. She was baffled and frustrated, but also concerned. She didn’t know what was going on yet, and a call this late usually meant trouble of some kind—a heart attack or a car crash.
Mike eased out of her with the familiar physical tug of reluctance. He pushed himself off to her side and sat up at the edge of the bed. The phone rang again. If he didn’t pick it up before the next ring, Tanya would get to hear Cindy’s grating late night message. That would be bad.
He picked up the phone.
“Mike?”
“Cindy, where are you? What’s going on?”
“Are you alone?”
“Of course I am. It’s two in the morning.”
Cindy was crying.
“What’s happening? Are you all right? Where are you calling from?”
“I’m—I decided to…I’m at the Logan Airport Hilton. I’m taking the first flight tomorrow.”
He put it together. She must have fled the party, and rushed home to pack. Then the mad rush to the airport to make the last flight out. He had been upstairs with Tanya when her plane was lifting off. He forced himself back to moment.
“The first flight?”
“To New York.”
“Wait a second—I don’t…What’s going on?
Mike heard Tanya shifting on the bed behind him. His furnace kicked on. The wind was steady against his house. The phone line was alive with the imminence of the unspoken.
“Cindy?”
“I have a date with Mark Toland tomorrow. I’ve been dreaming about him for years. Now there’s no reason not to see him.”
“Except your marriage.”
“Are you going to lecture me about fidelity? It would never have occurred to me if you hadn’t—”
“So this is revenge?”
“It’s reality. You changed the rules. Things have to be different after that. This is the way things are now. If Mark Toland had wanted to undress me last year I would have told you about it and it would have been exciting. You always liked the idea of other men being attracted to me. I might have even flirted a little, let him look down my dress or at least say I did, just to get you revved up. But to actually let him do anything…”
“Jesus.”
“Please, Mike.”
“What—I can’t have a reaction to this?”
“You can react. But you can’t make me feel guilty and you can’t expect anyone to sympathize with you. No one’s going to do that. It’s like watching a mugger get robbed. People cheer when that happens.”
“So you’re doing it to hurt me?”
“No, Mike, it had nothing to do with you. I’ve been in love with Mark Toland since the ninth grade.”
“Why call me, then? Why wake me up at two in the morning to tell me about it?”
“I don’t know. But I didn’t wake you up.”
He expelled a long breath. “No. You didn’t.”
“I hate this.”
“Don’t do it.”
She sighed. “I mean all of this.”
“Come home.”
“Give me a reason.”
Tanya walked around the bed. Mike noticed she had gotten dressed, but she was barefoot. She held out her hands, elbows tight to her body, and let her palms curl up as if tugged by her eyebrows. She might as well have said, “What the hell is going on, how long is this going to take?” He answered with a lifted arm, one finger up, miming “Give me a little more t
ime, I’ll explain later.”
“Cindy—”
“Forget it. I have things to do in the city anyway.”
“What things?”
“Just—appointments. I don’t really feel like going into it.”
He squeezed the phone so hard his knuckles hurt. This was much worse than the planned adultery. He mashed his eyes shut.
“You don’t want to tell me? Fine. I’ll tell you.”
But Tanya chose that moment to give up on him. She raised her arms again but the gesture this time was different. She might have been throwing two crumpled pieces of paper at him. She shook her head and bent down to grab her shoes. Her back was to him as she started for the door. Mike covered the phone with his hand.
“Wait—”
She gave him a thin, tired smile. “You’re a little too married for me, Mike. Sorry.”
Then she was out the door. When he put the phone to his ear again, Cindy said, “She’s there.”
“What?”
“That girl. She’s there with you.”
“She’s leaving.”
“You were with her in our bed.”
“Cindy—”
“You better go after her, Mike. Don’t let her leave angry. Tell her you’re getting a divorce. It will be interesting, telling the truth for a change.”
She hung up.
Mike heard the front door close. A minute later he heard Tanya’s truck start up and pull out of the driveway.
He fell back on the bed. For the moment he had no energy, but he knew what he had to do. First thing: wash these sheets. Then he had to try and sleep for a couple of hours. He dug his fingertips into his forehead, staring up at the ceiling, which definitely needed to be taped, spackled and repainted.
He sat up, swiveling the Rubik’s cube of logistics. He hadn’t gotten the chance to say it, but he knew the appointment Cindy was talking about. She was going to see her family doctor, who worked with Planned Parenthood and enjoyed a profitable sideline in clean safe abortions.
Mike was pacing now, hyperventilating. He had to stop her. And he would, he’d talk her out of it. He just needed to think. It was early Sunday morning, that was a huge advantage. She couldn’t see the doctor until Monday. Mike had time to get into the city. Billy’s check wouldn’t clear until Tuesday at the earliest, but that was okay. He could dip into the thousand dollars he had stashed in case the IRS attached his bank account. He could show her a nice time in the city if he got the chance,, and replace the cash out of Billy’s check next week. And he had an old Hy-Line ticket left over from the summer, when a some emergency had forced him to cancel a trip off-island. Those tickets were good for a year.
The first boat was 7:45. He’d be on the road by 9:30.
His clients Josh and Emily Levin kept an old Acura sedan in the Steamship Authority parking lot for just this sort of occasion. They always spent the month of December in Nevis, some little island in the Caribbean. He had the key to their brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. He knew their alarm code and they had long ago given him an open invitation to use the house when they were away. He had painted the place top to bottom five years before.
He could stay over and be at the doctor’s office bright and early, well-rested. The office was on Eighty-second and Madison, with a coffee shop across the street: an excellent surveillance post. And the coffee was pretty good.
This was doable.
Mike took a breath. He had good friends. More than that, he had allies. He had partisans. People like Josh Levine and Billy Delavane would always come through for him. What was that phrase? It took a village—to raise a kid or keep your marriage going or stay solvent. Well, fuck the village.
He had a platoon.
And he had hope. Cindy couldn’t have decided yet. She would never contemplate some random sexual dalliance on the eve of such a huge step. Maybe she was using Mark Toland to help her decide. Either way, Mike would be there to keep her from making the mistake.
Mike felt infallible that morning, as he got ready to leave. But he wasn’t. In fact he was making a terrible mistake, one in a long string of accidental blunders. Every move Mike had made for the last month, now including this trip to Manhattan, taken together and viewed with the cold eye of the law, would combine in the diabolical machinery of circumstance to cast him as the primary suspect in Nantucket’s most gruesome and notorious murder, ever. In less than a week he’d be in jail and facing the very real possibility of life in prison. If he’d known all that, he would have gone anyway. But he would have left a paper trail.
He was going to need one.
Part Two: Post Mortem
Chapter Twenty-two
Suspects
The Nantucket police station was occupied and under siege at the same time. Inside, every jail cell and office, as well as all the common rooms were filled with witnesses and suspects. The C-pac team from off-island had commandeered the upstairs conference room and filled it with high-tech computers and low-tech chalk boards, boxes of files and half a dozen serious technicians who were working everything from background checks to forensics.
Haden Krakauer was interviewing one of the girls from Fiona’s maid service in the second floor interrogation room when I arrived.
Outside, gathered in the big parking lot off Fairgrounds Road, the press was turning my domain into a familiar off-island circus of vans with gaudy logos and microwave antennas, lights and microphones, snaking cables and of course the jostling crowds of reporters. The Boston newspeople were the most visible and self-important, but there were network correspondents and cable news stringers, too, just as Lonnie Fraker had predicted.
A busty, Botoxed blonde was clutching a microphone as she finished her report, staring down the red light above camera lens. “…and so, with no clues, leads, or suspects in custody, the local police remain baffled at this hour by the death of one of this tiny, privileged island’s most prominent citizens. All we know for sure, this cold December morning: a powerful man lies brutally murdered, and his killers are still on the loose.”
“And the press will milk the story until they’ve made every last possible cheesy dime out of it,” I muttered under my breath as the reporter identified herself and wrapped up her story. “Or until something sleazier comes along to distract people from all the unpleasant actual news going on in the world.”
“Or you solve it, Chief. That would really spoil everything.” I turned. David Trezize was standing next to me, squinting into the crowd. “Hey—they’re still cashing in on those JonBenet Ramsey stories. Everyone loves a mystery.”
I had parked my cruiser in the rear security lot and normally I would have walked in through the garage entrance, but I was curious this morning. I was wearing my uniform, I looked like one more cop. David was the only reporter who recognized me. I headed back around the corner. I didn’t want this pack chasing me, not at eight o’clock on a Monday morning.
“Come on inside with me,” I said to David. “I need to talk to you.”
I was already walking. Trezize hurried to catch up. “Am I getting an exclusive? It better be for this week’s edition because I might not have a newspaper next week.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, David.”
“Care to take out an ad? I could use the revenue.”
We pushed through the throng into the main lobby. For the moment I was alone with the pudgy reporter.
“I need to talk to you about last night,” I said. “And we should do it with a lawyer present.”
“What, I’m a suspect?”
“You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to waive that right anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to legal representation. If you can’t afford a lawyer—”
“Chief—”
“Let me finish, David. This is serious. If you can’t afford a lawyer,
one will be appointed for you by the court. Do you understand these rights as I’ve explained them to you?”
“Of course I do, but—”
“Then you might not want to talk to me right now.”
“You can’t seriously believe I could have done this.”
“I believe anyone could do anything, under the right circumstances.”
“I was trying to take a splinter out of my son’s hand last week and my fingers went limp. I couldn’t do it. Does that sound like a murderer?”
I sighed. “That’s not the right question, David. The right question is, where were you between the hours of eleven and midnight last night?”
“I was—I don’t know, let me think for second.”
“This is exactly what I’m saying. That’s an answer you need to get right the first time.”
“I was—I was driving around.”
“Just driving? At midnight?”
“I—it’s embarrassing. I drove over to, to talk to my wife, my ex-wife. About the kids, there’s been a problem and I thought if we just sat down and discussed it we could clear things up. We used to be able to talk.”
“How did it go?”
“That’s my point, she wasn’t there. Midnight on a school night. The sitter’s car was in the driveway. She drives a used Volvo. I can tell you this much, Chief—if I had left the kids with a sitter on a school night and I was still out that late, Patty would have crucified me. Normally, I would have gone in and checked with the girl, found out where Patty was. But I knew. She was with Grady Malone. Grady’s ex-wife has the kids on Sunday, so where else would they go?”
“David—”
“I drove to Grady’s house. Her car was sitting there, you could see it from the road. She didn’t even bother to park in the back.”
“So what did you do?”
“I just sat there.”
“You didn’t go in?”
“And do what? Start a fight? I couldn’t even snoop at the windows. They would have seen my tracks in the snow. He shoveled the driveway but that’s it. So, yeah, I just sat there. I saw a shadow move across the blinds occasionally. Then the lights went out.”
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