“He never used drugs.”
“I know.”
“Jared’s probably the nicest boy in school. He’s definitely the smartest. No one else ever says anything interesting. He’d be a good policeman, Chief Kennis. No, seriously—better than Bob Coffin. Jared notices things, like when Ms. Hamer stopped wearing her wedding ring last month, or when I got this haircut. They took off less than an inch, no one else paid any attention. My own dad didn’t notice, and neither did Mason. Mason Taylor, he’s—”
“I know who he is.”
I had helped Mason at a bad moment a couple of years ago, and secretly played Cyrano for him with Alana. But she didn’t need to know that. More recently, I’d been reading his increasingly political editorials in Veritas—attacking Israel’s Gaza blockade, defending Edward Snowden, talking about drone strikes, suggesting that Yemeni shepherds who’d had their flocks dry-roasted by American missiles might hate us for more than our freedom. The school principal loathed Mason, but hadn’t censored him yet, most likely because he didn’t relish the prospect of a visit from the boy’s bloviating dad, Selectman Dan Taylor, storming his office in high dudgeon, declaiming the First Amendment and threatening a lawsuit.
I tipped my head, gesturing her to continue.
“Well, he’s kind of why I’m here,” she said. “He’s why I was out at the house, I mean—him and Jared.”
She stopped at that point, the way you stop when you’re driving in the moors and the dirt road narrows into an overgrown footpath. She couldn’t go forward and I wasn’t letting her go back. “Alana?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you this.”
“What aren’t you supposed to tell me?”
“Any of it. Why I was there, what’s going on, who’s involved. Any of it.”
I sat forward. “Did someone threaten you?”
“I should go.”
“Because we can protect you.”
“The Nantucket Police Department?”
“It’s possible.”
“Twenty-four hours a day?”
We sat staring at each other. I tried to regroup. She had to be the girl Liam Phelan mentioned. But she’d assume he’d broken his word if I used his name. I’d have to work around it. “No one needs to know you told me anything. There’s no way they can know—unless the NPD goes after these people, whoever they are. And I can promise you we won’t do that until we have enough evidence to put them away.”
“Well, that won’t happen. That’s the whole point.”
“I think you should let me decide that.”
“But no one threatened you.”
I stood and walked to the window. I found the dreary view of the parking lot and the traffic on Fairgrounds Road obscurely comforting at that moment. Everything looked dull and ordinary—just the way I liked it. The wind rasped against the big window and the gray sky promised snow. But the office was warm. The big furnace in the basement made the building hum softly. I touched the pane of glass—the fragile integument of civilization.
I turned to face Alana. “Here’s what I can offer you. Nothing you say leaves the room, until I know I can take action, and if I do choose to arrest these people, I’ll make sure you’re protected. If we gather enough evidence, we’ll never mention you at all.”
“But you won’t gather any evidence. It all got burned in the fire.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“You won’t believe me anyway.”
“Try me.” I walked back and sat down. She was looking down, picking some dirt or a speck of dried food off the knee of her jeans. I said nothing and waited. Silence exerts its own pressure, and I let the pressure build. When she began, it was as if I’d caught her in the middle of a conversation. Maybe she had just turned the volume up on the monologue running inside her head.
“This group of men is getting girls hooked on a new drug like oxy, I don’t what it’s called, and then using them in these…movies they make. Mason asked me to help him. We’re just sort of friends now and he was totally sprung over Jill Phelan.”
“Sprung?”
“Sorry. He was falling in love with her. He knew she was with Oscar, but I think he likes being—unrequited? When you feel as much as Mason does, another person just gets in the way. At least that’s how it seemed with us. We’re much better just being friends. Anyway, he was freaking out and he had this crazy scheme where he’d pretend to recruit me and we’d both hear their pitch and then we’d know what was going on.”
“And you did that?” She nodded. “That was incredibly brave.”
She studied her knees with a rueful smile. “Now he tells me.”
“Go on.”
“We went out to this man’s house in ’Sconset. His name is Howard McAllister…I went back the next day and looked at the letters in his mailbox. My dad picks up his trash, but I didn’t want to ask my dad about him. There were other people there, too—Chick Crosby and Ms. DeHart from school, Charles Forrest from the Land Bank, and this contractor Jared knows, Brad Thurman. I made a list—”
“Jared was there too?”
“He followed us that night. He had come to the house to bring me a textbook I left at school, and he wound up following us. We never would have gotten out of there if not for him. We’ve been trying to identify the rest of them, but…I saw a couple of them on Mahon About Town, but he never includes any names and I thought if I started poking around and someone found out…”
“That was smart. So what did you do?”
“First I tried to get Jill to come forward—Jill Phelan? She’s in my class, and she was out there that night. She was obviously involved, but she denied everything. Then she admitted everything, but she wouldn’t talk to anyone about it, and got mad at me and made me swear I’d never tell anyone, but she must have told someone about me because this guy, Doug Blount? He’s a caretaker? He came up to me in the Stop & Shop and walked me back into the stockrooms where they have a bathroom and pushed me inside and told me if I said anything to anyone I’d be next, and I didn’t know what he was talking about, so he said they’d get me hooked on heroin, or that other horrible stuff they use. It only takes, like, one hit sometimes, and then when I needed drugs bad enough I’d be their next little movie star. That’s what he said, their next little movie star. I started crying and he slapped me and told me to shut up and left me there in the bathroom. I didn’t come out for like an hour.”
“His name was Doug Blount?”
“You can’t talk to him! That’s what I was telling you! You promised!”
“Okay, okay. Don’t worry. I just want to get all the names straight. The ones you know.”
“He was serious.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“He was trying to scare me and it worked, and I could tell he really, really liked that.”
We sat in silence for a few moments while Alana caught her breath and I fought down the urge to go out and arrest these people, praying they’d resist arrest, and sweat them until I got the rest of the names and then book them all and scrub them off the island, like you’d tent a house for termites.
“Jill must have been planning to go to the police. They found out and gave her an overdose.”
I stared at her. “That’s attempted murder.”
She didn’t look away. “That’s why I’m scared.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No.”
“It could be a coincidence.”
“Maybe, but—”
“You don’t trust coincidences.” I nodded. “Well, cops hate them.”
“So…?”
“Jesus, Alana.” I ran both hands through my hair and squeezed my temples hard with my forearms. This was exactly the kind of horrific bullshit I had come to Nantucket to escape. This was big city stuff, L.A. stuff. But it was followi
ng me, like one of those dogs in the movies that sniff their way across the country chasing after their owner, having adventures and getting reunited at the end. Except this dog had rabies and needed to be put down—pronto, as Sam Trikilis would say.
I decided to get the conversation back on track. “You were out at the Thayer place today. How does that fit in?”
“I—this sounds crazy.”
I offered a reassuring smile. “You and Jared are the only sane parts of this story, so far.”
“Okay, well…I started following Chick Crosby. Alana Trikilis, girl detective. But I didn’t know what else to do and I had to do something.”
“Why Chick?”
“I guess…he seemed the most harmless, and he had to be the one actually making the movies, he has all the equipment. Plus, he’s so clueless and into his own head I knew he’d never notice. I mean, you wave to him in the street and he doesn’t notice. So anyway…I started watching his house whenever I could, nights when I told my dad I was at friends’ houses studying, and weekends, and whenever he went anywhere I trailed him.”
“Go on.”
“One night I followed him to that house and I peeked in the windows and saw him setting up cameras and lights in the bedroom, and I got really scared and I was going to run but the others showed up. They had this girl, Emily Trott, with them. I sort of knew her, we were on the basketball team last year but we both dropped out. Guys were stamping around the house and I lay flat in the bushes, my heart was beating so loud I was sure they could hear it and I was trying not to breathe, but it was a really windy night, so…finally they were all inside and I realized this was my chance so I filmed everything they did with my iPhone.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Yeah. They caught me. They must have seen light reflecting on the screen or something. Blount and the rich guy came out and grabbed me and I was screaming but there was no one around to hear it and Blount said they should give me a shot of heroin right there and then, like he had threatened before, but McAllister called him a ‘stupid thug’ and said, ‘I have a better idea.’ He took my phone and smashed it and said ‘Now she has nothing.’ And I just ran.”
I let her catch her breath. “But you went back. You were out at the house looking for evidence.”
She nodded. “They burned the place just in time.”
I took a pad out of my desk drawer and made a few notes, more to let a little air into our conversation than anything else. I wasn’t likely to forget a word she said.
I looked up from my pad. “How much of this did you tell Mr. Phelan?”
“Nothing. None of it. I mean, I told him what was going on, but he freaked out on me so bad and I just got out of there. I thought he might kill somebody himself. I mean—what if it was the wrong person? Or, even if it was the right person, that’s totally whacked. That’s crazy.”
I nodded. “Good. I’m glad. You did the right thing. No contact with him since?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do now.”
“Leave it to the police. It’s a police matter.”
“But if—I don’t see what you can…the evidence is gone, the people are mostly bigshots who’d laugh at you if you accused them of anything.”
“Not all of them.”
“No, but—come on. Someone like Doug Blount? He’s ten times more scared of McAllister than he is of the police. All he has to do is stonewall. He could accuse you of slander and he’d probably win.”
“Unless the victims come forward.”
“But they won’t. Jill’s in a coma and Emily’s parents are shipping her off to some boarding school in Maine. I don’t know who the other girls are. But I know one thing for sure—they’re too embarrassed to go to the police. No one wants to admit this stuff—being addicted to drugs and—all the rest of it. So it’s hushed up and the house where they did it is gone, and who knows where the films are. On some flash drive somewhere, which you’d need a warrant to even look at and you could never get a warrant on hearsay from some girl.”
The diatribe wound down. I blew out a breath while she took one. “You’ve obviously thought about this a lot.”
“It’s all I’ve been thinking about. For weeks.”
“Could you get Mason to come forward? If he corroborated your story…”
“No way.”
“Maybe I could talk to him.”
“He’s too scared. He’ll just deny everything. He told me so.”
“How about Jared?”
She shook her head. “Those people could ruin his father. He does most of his work for Brad Thurman. And it’s the same for my dad. One word and his whole ’Sconset route goes to Myles Reis. McAllister is Dad’s customer and they’re all pals on Baxter Road, and my dad doesn’t have a ten-customers-more-or-less, easy-come, easy-go lifestyle. Sorry. I’m not going to wreck his business to make some useless point and turn myself into a bigger loser than I already am, for nothing. I’m just not.”
“I could talk to Jared anonymously.”
She stared at me. “They saw him that night. Not just me. Maybe I didn’t make that clear. They know who he is. ‘Anonymous’ doesn’t work around here, anyway, Chief Kennis. Everyone knows everything about everybody. That’s why I didn’t say anything before. That’s why I was trying to…to do things on my own.”
“But you’re going to stop that now. Because you understand how dangerous it is.”
“I guess.”
“I need you to be certain about this, Alana.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll leave it alone. I will.”
“Thank you.” Time to move on. I had an arson fire to investigate. “Tell me about the house. Was it deserted when you got there?”
“It was burning when I got there. I looked inside and I could see the curtains flaming in the living room. And the couch. It was really smoky. I tried to get in but the doors were locked.”
“Really?”
“I know. Nobody locks their doors around here. I don’t even have a key to my own house. My dad must have one somewhere but he never uses it.”
“You said doors…so you tried the back door, too?”
“Yeah and the bulkhead. The whole place was locked up tight.”
“So when you ran around to the back…did you see anything—or anyone suspicious?”
“Just Mr. Toland—and Mike Henderson. They were shouting at each other. When we were leaving I saw the newspaper guy, Mr. Trezize? And some crazy old man—could he have set the fire?”
I thought about David Lattimer. The only way he could set a fire would be smoking his pipe in bed. It was a class issue for him. Felonies were for the hoi polloi. I remembered him quoting with evident relish Winston Churchill’s response to his first view of real poverty, after touring the East End of London during an early campaign: “How strange it must be! Never to see anything beautiful, never to eat anything delicious…never to say anything clever.” Snobs like Lattimer didn’t burn down a house, they filed suit with the Boston Land Court to have it taken by eminent domain.
I shook my head. “Not likely.”
“I know Mike Henderson didn’t do it. That’s a painter’s worst nightmare—setting a house on fire.”
“Yeah, Mike’s no arsonist. How about the other guy?”
“I talked to him. He’s a movie director. He was scouting locations, taking pictures. That’s what he said. He had a really expensive-looking camera. If he wanted to burn down a house he’d wait until he was shooting his movie. I mean, if there was a fire in his movie. Why waste it? Like in Gone With the Wind when they burned down all those sets at the MGM studio.”
I nodded, thinking: I want to take a look at those photographs.
“Let’s go back a little further. How did you get to the house? Were you driving? Walking?”
“I was riding my bicycle. It’
s a Specialized mountain bike. I can go anywhere with it.”
“That’s good. People in cars don’t really look around that much—they’re just staring at the road in front of them. Bikers pay attention. They’re actually in the environment. That’s the whole point.”
She smiled. “Yeah.”
“So what did you see?”
“I don’t know…the usual—hawks and cardinals and turkey buzzards, lots of bushes. Some beer cans and paper cups. Someone had dumped an old refrigerator out there.”
“The actual dump is taking them for free right now.”
“I know but…this one looked like it had been there for a long time. The door was off and I think something was nesting in it.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really.”
“No traffic?”
She sat up a little. “I almost got driven off the road by some jerk.”
“Which way was he coming?”
“Right at me.”
“So he could have been coming from the house.”
She took a quick breath, contemplating that idea. “Wow. You really think so?”
“What kind of vehicle? SUV? Truck?”
“It was a black Ford F-150. A new one. I didn’t get the license plate.” She must have caught my skeptical look—everyone watches the cop shows. She’d be dusting for fingerprints next. “No, really, I tried! I wanted to get the number. I wanted to report the guy. He was going like forty miles an hour on those dirt roads. I hope he bottomed out or hit a deer or something. Asshole.”
I pushed my chair back. “Okay. Thanks, Alana. You’ve been a huge help.”
“But nothing’s going to happen to those people.”
“Something’s already happened. Their secret is out. And like you said—there’s nothing anonymous on Nantucket. They tried to scare you, but they can’t be sure you won’t go to the police, anyway. You were a witness to the fire and there were other witnesses. That’s an open arson investigation. Jill Phelan could wake up tomorrow, and her father’s on the rampage. Apart from everything else, their little soundstage just burned down with all their equipment in it. They may be safe, but for the moment they’re out of business. They’re not going to be making any more movies for a while.”
Nantucket Grand Page 6
