“Too long.” He sighed, but there was no pain in it. He was an actor, a clown.
“We’re working with the state police.” Funny, the truth sounded like a bigger lie than any she had told. “We want to know if this man is one of your customers.”
“Our customers,” the young man said, his tone still lilting with his innate joy of life, “receive a guarantee of confidentiality, just like the U.S. mail. Mail is private. Mail is sacred.”
Tess supposed that if one ended up working in a shipping-and-mail outlet, it helped to see the job as part of a higher calling.
“We don’t want to read his mail, we just want to know if he’s still a customer. We know he was using this address five years ago.”
“Five years ago? That’s a lifetime here.” But he removed the plastic headphones from his ears and studied the photo. Steel drum music, tinny but infectious, came bouncing out of his headset. “Maybe, maybe not. He’s definitely not someone who comes in now. You wouldn’t forget that face, would you?”
“You wouldn’t?” To Tess, their quarry was disturbingly normal. Not handsome, but not unattractive. Medium height, medium build. It would be too easy for him to move through life without drawing attention to himself.
“Man, he looks like the Unabomber.” He tapped the bushy beard in the photo, the only similarity that Tess could see between Alan Palmer and Ted Kaczynski. “Does he blow stuff up?”
“Only people’s lives,” Carl said.
They had other photos, just no places to distribute them. Major Shields had said they could drive back to Spartina, if they were so inclined, and check with Ashe to see if Alan Palmer’s driver’s license matched the man Ashe had known as Eric Shivers. But Tess was already certain of the answer—after all, Spartina was where they had found this link. She’d much rather go back and see what the Gunts family remembered. Of course, the state police had deemed that interview much too important for Tess and Carl to handle, or even observe.
“Eric Shivers,” she said. “Think he had a family?”
“Almost everyone does.”
“He was from Crisfield, right? Or around there.”
“Yeah, so—no.”
“No, what?”
“We’re not supposed to be doing that.”
“We’re not supposed to be trying to talk to hospital personnel, or looking for a connection between the place where Eric died and the place where Alan Palmer was treated in-state. We’re not supposed to talk to anyone directly connected to the victims. But what about Eric Shivers’s family?”
“What about them?”
“They could tell us about Eric. The hospital is one possibility, but it’s not the only possibility. Maybe it will turn out that he and Alan Palmer went to the same… band camp.”
“Band camp? What, this all began over some chance meeting with a tuba? You’re throwing too wide a net. You have to be focused in police work, methodical.”
They were back out on Guilford Avenue. Tess glanced up at the expressway that loomed over the street. How easy it would be to go up there, get out of town, head east instead of west.
“Look, we have two choices. We can drive back to Spartina, retrace our steps, and talk to the same guy we talked to last week. Or we could go back into that mailbox store, pay to fax the photo to Ashe in Virginia, and head to the Eastern Shore to learn something new.”
“They told us not to do that.”
Tess was becoming impatient. She couldn’t help thinking how quickly Crow or Whitney would warm to such a plan. How had she ended up being saddled with this strange stick-in-the-mud, this know-it-all?
“They told us we couldn’t interview people they had earmarked. But clearly they can’t get angry if we develop a few new leads. If we don’t learn anything, they’ll never know we were in Crisfield. If we do, they’ll be thankful.”
“Thankful enough to ignore the fact that you disobeyed the prime directives?”
“The prime directives?”
“From RoboCop,” Carl said. “Serve the Public Trust. Protect the Innocent. Uphold the Law.”
“Look, I can handle the state police,” Tess said, surprised at how confident she felt, how cocky. “The fact is, we still have my trump card. If they cut us loose from this, I can go to the press.”
“You told me you hated the press.”
“But they don’t know that.”
Carl chewed the inside of his cheek, puzzled. His mind didn’t work on a lot of levels, Tess realized. If you threw him a football, he’d run straight toward the goal. If you dealt him a bad hand in poker, he’d fold. He wasn’t dumb, far from it, but he had a directness about him that could be a handicap.
She’d have to remember that—and control for it.
CHAPTER 19
Tess always forgot how far Crisfield was, how deep Maryland dipped down on the other side of the bay. Starting out, she assumed it was closer than Ocean City and the Delaware beach towns, which took a solid three hours to reach on a summer weekend. But Crisfield was just as far.
She also had forgotten the feeling that this was where the world ended. The main drag of Crisfield essentially dead-ended into the bay, which opened up before them, as vast as any ocean here, so it seemed all water and sky. The result was almost unbearably bright on a spring day. Tess felt naked and exposed.
“The current address for the Shiverses is on Princess Anne Court,” Carl said. “Take a left here.”
“You want to stop and get lunch first? It’s almost one o’clock.”
“No. Besides, when we called from the road, we said we’d be there by one-thirty.”
“Well, it’s not one-thirty.”
“I don’t do lunch.”
Carl Dewitt didn’t eat conventional meals at all, as Tess was learning. He went the entire day on Diet Mountain Dew and then ate one huge helping of protein and grease at night—not unlike a boa constrictor. But she conceded, in part because Crisfield had few restaurants for the crab-averse. There was a Dairy Queen back on 50. She’d hold out for that.
Still, she could have the last word. “You know, you’ll end up gaining weight, living that way.”
“How do you figure? It’s not more than two thousand calories, and I don’t take in empty calories like alcohol.” He gave her a pointed, superior look. Carl found the consumption of alcohol decadent and had almost passed out from shock when Tess ordered a beer with a midday meal. “I burn at least two thousand calories every day. Besides, I don’t want to be a little stick, like that boyfriend of yours.”
Crow had come out of the house in his pajama bottoms just that morning to wish her well on her various errands. Tess had thought he looked admirably lean, not unlike the greyhound by his side. The morning, Baltimore, Crow— it suddenly seemed very far away.
“Well, first of all, it’s horrible, what you’re doing to your digestion. I have a theory—my own, I’ll grant you, not a dietitian’s—that your body can absorb only so many calories at a single sitting and any extra is more readily converted to fat. Your body’s not a cash register. It doesn’t reconcile accounts at day’s end, decide whether you finished up in the red or the black, and adjust your weight accordingly.”
“But if you’re in deficit when you sit down to eat, it’s like being an empty gas tank. It’s better than what you do, filling yourself every three hours, every time your dipstick drops a level.”
“You’re mixing your automotive metaphors.”
Carl snorted. “I forget. You seem like a normal person most of the time, but you’re one of those overeducated types. What did you study at college? Let me guess, one of those weird things that no one really knows what it is. Ethnography? Symbiotics?”
She started to correct him, only to catch his wisp of a satiric smile. “The fact that you know enough to make a joke about semiotics tells me you’re not as ignorant as you’d like people to believe.”
“Man, I grew up in Cecil County and joined the Toll Facilities Po-leece when I was twenty, a college d
ropout. I’m just a dumb hick. Couldn’t you tell that by the way those fellas treated me over at Pikesville?”
“I can tell you like to play that part. But it occurs to me that there were some books in your house, and they weren’t Reader’s Digest Condensed Versions. You read some, don’t you? I mean, when you’re not memorizing movie dialogue.”
He was sheepish now, caught. “I do like history, especially the Civil War.”
Tess sighed and made a mental note not to teach Dewitt how to play Botticelli, no matter how many long drives they had to spend in each other’s company.
The woman who opened the door at the Shivers house could have been anywhere between twenty-five and forty-five. Lines fanned out from the corners of her eyes, while her sad mouth seemed to be encased in double sets of parentheses. The price you pay for all this light, Tess thought.
“Mrs. Shivers?” Carl asked. Tess noticed that his voice had shifted in some indefinable way. He was playing his Upper Shore card for all it was worth. Not that a Crisfielder would have much affection for someone from Cecil County, but it was preferable to Baltimore.
“Hallie Langley. I am—I was—I am Eric’s sister.” She stopped, still puzzling over tenses after all these years.
“I thought your parents were going to be here.”
“Maybe it sounds funny to you, but my parents still don’t like to talk about Eric’s death. It was so sudden, so unexpected, and he—well, he was their favorite. I’m not saying they slighted me. They didn’t. But he was their first child and their only boy, and they never got over it.”
Once Tess might have been surprised by such a candid, easy confession, especially from a hard-shell Eastern Shore native. But she had learned people were often anxious to tell their secrets, if only someone would ask. Strangers made the best confidantes. Hallie Langley led them into the shadowy living room, a place that did not appear to have changed much over the past two decades.
“Eric was born in the hospital over in Salisbury?” This was Carl. Tess had agreed he could take the lead here.
“Born there and died there. But we always lived here.”
“Now I’m not clear how he died. The hospital records say it was an allergy attack, but there was no autopsy.”
“I guess people would call it a freak accident. It was the big bull and oyster roast, you know the one?”
Tess did. It had been an obligatory stop for the state’s politicians as far back as she could remember.
“So, you know, it’s safe as houses. My parents took us over there and gave us money, told us to do what we wanted to do. Eric was four years older’n me. He sure didn’t want to be with his little sister.”
“Yeah, well,” Carl said. “Boys.”
That moment of inarticulate empathy hit Hallie like a drug. She began talking in a rush.
“He ditched me to be with some boys in his class. And some girls. They wanted to meet girls. I made a fuss, but he gave me some money and said he’d hook up with me at five o’clock near the front gate. He gave me plenty of money, but I was mad at him. I hoped my parents would beat him to the gate, so I could tell what he’d done. Then five o’clock came and he didn’t come and he didn’t come—” Her hard, tanned face went slack, and Tess could almost see the little girl she had been, standing forlornly by the front gate, time stretching out the way it does when someone makes you wait. As the minutes go by, impatience turns to anger. Anger slides into fear, then back to anger again.
Unless the person never shows up.
“My parents got there and started asking, ”Where’s Eric?“ By then, I didn’t want to tell them he had ditched me, I knew he’d get in trouble, only not too much trouble, because they did favor him. In fact, I always thought my mother blamed me a little for letting Eric buy me off. She always has a way of figuring out how things are my fault. Anyway, we found him in a grove of trees, outside the fairgrounds proper.”
“Was he dead?” Tess winced at the bluntness of Carl’s question, but it didn’t seem to bother Hallie.
“Probably. The paramedics came and took him to the hospital, working on him all the while. But, even as a little girl, I thought it was just for our benefit.”
“Still,” Carl said, “to die from an asthma attack.”
“Wasn’t asthma, exactly, it was shellfish. He was bad allergic, real bad. It was almost a kind of joke, someone growing up around here allergic to shellfish. We used to say Eric could die if the wind cut the wrong way. Well, all it took was for a little crabmeat to get into a hamburger, and that’s what happened. Someone was broiling burgers and crab cakes on the same grill.”
“I’m allergic to shellfish too,” Tess said. “But if you have a reaction, there’s usually time to get a shot. And if you’re really allergic, you can carry an EpiPen, right?”
“Yeah, now. But he didn’t have an EpiPen and he didn’t get help fast enough.”
“Was he alone?” Carl’s question was a good one, open-ended but shrewd. Tess shot him an approving look.
“They said he must have been.”
“They said. But what do you think?”
Hallie Langley pressed her lips in a hard line, determined not to cry. Tess realized that suffering, as much as the sun, had set the woman’s features into these premature creases.
“No. No, I don’t. Someone had to be with him. Whoever it was must have panicked. They had”—she lowered her voice, as if this were still a secret, all these years later—“they had been smoking dope and drinking beer. I saw the cans, saw the cigarette where it had fallen. My daddy put that butt in his pocket, but I never forgot it.”
“Did you see who he went off with that day?”
“I saw him with his friends from high school. But his buddies told everyone he went off with some girl. She swore up and down that she didn’t, and one of her friends swore by her, saying they were together most of the afternoon. So maybe everyone was there, or no one was there. I don’t know.”
Carl leaned forward. He was close enough to touch Hallie Langley or take her hands in his. He was smart enough not to.
“What do you think, Ms. Langley?”
“Miss Shivers.”
“I thought—”
“I left my husband six weeks ago. So I guess I’m turning back into Miss Shivers.” She frowned, thinking something through. “Langley’s a better name, isn’t it?”
“It’s a pretty name, Langley. It suits you. But Shivers is a good name too, and it’s your family name.”
“With no one to carry it on. Not since Eric died.” Hallie shook her head, as if to clear her mind of some memory. “I’m sorry. To answer your question—no, I don’t think he was alone. I think he did go off with that girl, Becca. Becca Harrison. His friends would’ve known what to do if Eric had an attack, because they grew up with him.”
“Wasn’t she from here too?”
“She went to the high school, but she was one of the Notting Island kids.” Hallie smiled. “We called them Not-heads back then. Stupid thing, but it made them so angry. Why do kids say such stupid things to each other?”
“I thought I knew the bay, but I don’t know Notting Island.”
“Most people don’t.”
“Virginia or Maryland side?”
“Well, we like to say it depends on which way the tide is going,” Hallie said. “But, officially, it’s Maryland. Past Smith. Really, it’s like a piece of Smith that fell off.”
Tess couldn’t hold back any longer. “Is her family still there?”
Carl gave Tess a look, as if she were headed off on a tangent. But it seemed crucial to her. A boy had died under mysterious circumstances, only to have his name and Social Security number appropriated by a man who had reason to need a fake identity. Who would know better that his identity was available than someone who had witnessed his death? Becca Harrison might have clearer memories of the day.
“I wouldn’t know. It’s been fifteen years. I don’t even remember much about her. Becca Harrison. Not
Rebecca, mind you. Becca. If you called her Rebecca, she’d get all high and mighty and say, ”Rebecca was in the Bible. I’m Becca.“ As if it would shame her, somehow, to be in the Bible.”
“Perhaps,” Carl said, “this Becca would not say, as Rebekah did, ”I will go.“ Remember when Abraham’s servant goes to fetch a wife for Isaac?”
Hallie nodded. Tess, who always confused Rebekah and Isaac with Jacob and Rachel, was clearly out of her league, biblically.
“No, this girl never said, ”I will go‘ to anyone in her life.“
“So what are the odds she’s still there?”
“Slim to none. She was one of those people who was on her way to leaving from the moment she arrived. But those who are there should remember her, and someone might know where she’s gone. For what it’s worth, but I don’t think it’s worth much.”
“Why not?” Tess insisted. Carl frowned at her, a reminder that she was breaking their own ground rules. But Tess was not used to keeping quiet.
“She’s just one of those people who never admitted to doing anything wrong. Held herself like she was so perfect. Look, my family knows no one meant to hurt Eric. People panic when things go wrong. It was an accident. All you ask is that people own up to what they did. You can’t forgive them until they do.”
“And you can’t move on until you forgive.” That was Carl, his voice so low he might have been speaking to himself.
“How do you get to—I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten the name of the island already.”
“Notting,” Hallie said. “It’s the westernmost of the inhabited islands, the one beyond Smith. When you’ve gone as far as you can go and there’s nowhere else—that’s Notting Island.”
“How does one get there?”
Hallie smiled for the first time. “Boat is the preferred way. Unless you’re a real strong swimmer.”
CHAPTER 20
“There is no boat to Notting Island,” said the craggy-faced man sitting on his boat along one of Crisfield’s docks, eating a late lunch and washing it down with something in a paper sack. Tess realized she had been watching people eat all day, but had not eaten anything herself since her 7 A.M. bagel.
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