Deadout

by Jon McGoran

  Jimmy rolled down the window as he slowed alongside Teddy. “Police,” I heard him say. “Stop.”

  Teddy redoubled his efforts, leaning forward with his arms pumping hard, his hands flat like blades.

  “Stop!” Jimmy said, his voice sounding more weary than anything else.

  This time Teddy glanced over. But he didn’t slow down.

  Jimmy was still pacing him with the cruiser, and he reached out the window with his nightstick and gave Teddy a poke in the ribs, just enough get him off balance. Teddy took two more steps, almost in control, then a few more with his arms flailing. Then he seemed to come apart, limbs shooting out in all directions in a futile effort to regain his balance. He went over hard, his arms insufficient to stop what looked like a nasty face-plant.

  I’ll admit it—I laughed.

  Jimmy got out of the car and looked back at me, shaking his head. He might have heard me.

  The sirens had multiplied, and I looked back to see the fire trucks pulling up in front of the shipyard. The orange light illuminating the sky behind it was already dying back down.

  Teddy was rolling on the ground, his hands over his face. Jimmy was standing over him. He gave me a look as I walked up, letting me know that we were going to have a talk.

  Then Teddy groaned. Jimmy looked down at him and pulled out his handcuffs, saying, “You have the right to remain silent.”

  41

  When Jimmy got him to his feet, I could see Teddy had a split lip, a red nose, and grit in his eyebrows. I let out a snort at the sight of him, earning glares from them both.

  Jimmy led him past me to the car and when Teddy muttered, “Asshole,” Jimmy looked at me and nodded, like the kid had a point. Then he palmed Teddy’s skull and forced him down while he seated him in the back of the cruiser. He closed the door, and turned to face me.

  “You think that was funny?” he said.

  “Well … yeah. Parts of it were hilarious.”

  “Ha, ha. Okay, turn around.”

  “What for?” I protested.

  “Just turn around, dumb-ass.”

  I turned around and felt a pair of sharp pinches on my back. “What the fuck?” I said, turning back to see Jimmy holding a pair of taser darts trailing wires.

  He raised an eyebrow. “What’s up with this?”

  “You’ll have to ask your prisoner over there. I was trying to talk him out of whatever stunt he just pulled when one of his friends tagged me from behind.”

  He grunted noncommittally. “And what stunt was that?”

  We both looked over to where the firefighters were slowly rolling up their hoses.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Nola called me, concerned that he was about to do something stupid.”

  He snorted at that.

  “I know, right? Anyway, she told me where to find him, at his dad’s old Thompson Chemical Company place, on Edgartown Road. I tried to talk to him, and someone tased me from behind.”

  Jimmy let out a sigh and got into the car. “All right. We’ll talk more about it later.”

  I turned and walked back down the street, past my Jeep and toward the shipyard, to see what had actually happened. I had just reached the shipyard when Jimmy pulled up next to me and got out of the cruiser.

  “You know this is a crime scene under police control, right?” Teddy was fuming in the backseat.

  I shrugged, but didn’t stop walking. “I’m police.”

  He fell into step beside me. “Not here you’re not.”

  “Come on, I’m just having a look-see.”

  He shook his head. “That kid might be right about you.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  Behind the shipyard building was a small yard and a wooden dock, maybe forty feet long. Jimmy and I climbed the couple of steps up onto it and walked halfway out, to a blackened circle of charred wood with the crumpled ruins of what looked like a pile of crates, smoldering, smoking, and dripping with water. I felt a shiver go through me, and tensed my muscles against it. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke and wet ash, and behind it, almost as strong, harsh chemicals.

  Jimmy tilted his head. “What the hell is that?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Looks like burned-out beehives.”

  Lying on the dock a couple of feet away was the white plastic container I’d seen Teddy filling back at the industrial park. I crouched down and touched my finger to the opening. Then I sniffed it, pulling my head back from the sharp chemical smell.

  “Don’t be touching every goddamned thing,” Jimmy snapped.

  “This is what he used,” I said, looking up at him.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Doesn’t smell like gasoline or kerosene.”

  “Don’t know. I saw him filling this from a bigger tank at the industrial park.”

  Jimmy nodded, and looked out over the water at a set of lights slowly approaching out of the darkness.

  “What are you doing?” called a voice from the boat. It was Pete Westcamp. “You better not be messing with those bees! They’re the last ones I got!”

  Jimmy looked at me and winced.

  “Goddamn it,” Pete yelled, getting close enough that I could see him now. “You got no right taking those bees. I only left them there for a couple of hours. So you better bring ’em back this instant. I’m getting them off this goddamned island, taking them to Chappaquiddick, where maybe they’ll be safe.”

  “Hey, Pete,” Jimmy called out to him. The boat was coasting up to the dock. “These were your bees?”

  Pete was craning his neck to see up over the dock. The boat hit the piling harder than it was supposed to. Pete staggered but he didn’t fall. “What are you talking about?” he said, but his voice had lost its bluster, suddenly sounding old and confused. He didn’t bother tying up the boat, and it kicked back out into the water as he clambered onto the dock. He charged forward, then stopped and fell to his knees just outside the charred circle. “Where’s all my bees?” he asked, tears starting down his face. “What happened to my bees?”

  42

  It was midnight by the time they got Teddy booked, processed, and tucked into his cell. Martha’s Vineyard had five or six police departments but only one jail, and it was by far the nicest one I’d ever seen. In the middle of scenic Edgartown, blending right in with white clapboard, black shutters, and a white picket fence.

  Jimmy had emerged from the place five minutes earlier, carrying a couple of paper cups, and we were now drinking whiskey on the jail’s front steps.

  “You know, if I ever have to go to jail,” I told him, “I think this is the one for me.”

  Jimmy snorted. “The way you’re headed, you might get your wish.” He got a laugh out of that one, but not a long one. We were tired.

  “Did they set bail?”

  He shook his head. “Bail commissioner’s tied up until morning. Not really how it’s supposed to work, but to be fair, this is a tricky one. He’s not a typical flight risk, but he’s got lots of money, he owns a boat, and now he’s bragging about his connection to a shadowy cabal of eco-terrorists. Plus, I don’t think they know what to make of the crime.”

  “So what do you think’s going on?” I asked, nodding my head toward the jail building and the asshole inside it.

  Jimmy shrugged. “He says he thought he was burning up the GMO bees. That much I believe, because just before I came out here, I told him they were Pete Westcamp’s and he fell apart.” Pete’s honeybees were the last real ones on the island. And Teddy had just incinerated them. “Kid’s in there crying worse than Pete did, talking about what people are going to think about him.” He shook his head. “I still don’t understand how someone could get so attached to some goddamned bugs. But anyway, I told him I don’t care whose bees he thought he was burning up. He destroyed Westcamp’s property. He committed a crime. Maybe he meant to commit a different crime, but he still committed a crime. I don’t see how it changes things. And there’s still going to be arson charges.
” He took a sip. “And I think he’s full of shit about his secret eco-army. He says the Environmental Liberation Brigade is this big organization, but no one I asked has ever heard of it, not even Google. All I see is one asshole screwing up a stupid prank and getting in trouble for it on his own.”

  “He did have help, at least one guy, maybe two. And I’m pretty sure I know who, a big muscly hard-core mercenary type with a mean face and a knife tucked in his boot. I’m pretty sure that’s who tased me. Teddy’s been sneaking around to all these secret rendezvous. I’m pretty sure it’s been with the same guy.”

  “So, what, you’ve been watching him?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him.”

  “That’s what you’ve been doing for the old man?”

  “Not anymore. Anyway, I was watching when his pal dropped him off. Then, when Teddy ran in there to do the deed, they took off. Left him there high and dry.”

  “So, what, you’re saying they set him up?”

  “How’d you get there so fast? And the fire department?”

  He sighed. “Anonymous tip. I guess that would explain the phone calls.”

  “What’s that?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Nothing really. Just that when we let him have his phone call, he couldn’t get through to the number he was dialing. I could hear it from where I was sitting, ‘This number is not in service,’ with the little tone and everything. But he kept calling, same number, same result, over and over. Must have called it ten times. Got pretty worked up about it, too. Finally we told him he got one more try, he needed to call someone else.” He sipped his whiskey and looked me in the eye. “He called your friend Nola Watkins.”

  “How’d that go?” I said, my voice flat.

  Jimmy shrugged. “I think she told him to call his dad. He said he didn’t want to. Then he asked her to call someone else for him.” He snorted. “Gave her a bunch of instructions on how to take care of his chickens.”

  I drank some of my whiskey. Then drank some more. “So you believe someone else was involved.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t see how it changes anything for Master Renfrew in there.”

  I shook my head. “Me neither. Lock him up and throw away the key, I say. Make an example out of him. And frankly, I wouldn’t mind it if you found someplace a little less pleasant to keep him. But if there’s other assholes working with him, they should be in there, too.”

  Jimmy drained his cup. “Well, you run into those friends of his, you let me know and I’ll lock them up with him.”

  43

  Renfrew had said he watched the sunrise from the front of his house every morning. The next morning before dawn, I was waiting for him.

  I wasn’t working for him anymore, but I felt an obligation to tell him about Teddy. Mostly, though, I wanted to see his face when I told him, see if he already knew.

  Jimmy had wondered how someone could get so worked up over a bunch of insects, and I did, too. But knowing those were the last real honeybees on the island felt like a punch in the gut. If it was part of some bizarre family grudge on Renfrew’s part, I wanted to know.

  Annalisa was right about the Wesley, but by the time I left Jimmy, it was too late to go anywhere else. So I’d spent the night tossing and turning, thinking, worrying, and checking the chair wedged against the door. Not very restful, but at least it had been brief. When I left, I packed up my stuff and brought it with me. I didn’t check out, though. If someone came looking for me, it was worth the nightly rate to keep them from figuring out I was staying somewhere else.

  The sky had gone from deep blue when I got there to pale pink and then gray. It seemed now to be getting darker rather than lighter, and in the gloom I could see the lights on Archie Pearce’s yacht.

  The predawn cold and damp were working their way into my bones, and I was starting to think maybe Renfrew had been telling tales about his morning regimen when I heard the patio door slide open behind me, followed a few seconds later by the shush, shush, shush of footsteps in the wet grass.

  Renfrew stepped around the chair next to me and eased himself into it without looking over. “A pleasant surprise, Mr. Carrick,” he said, raising his coffee to take a sip. “Had you called ahead I would have poured you a cup.”

  I wished I’d called ahead. The coffee smelled incredible, and I couldn’t tell if it was because it was cold and damp and five in the morning or if it was some special rich-guy coffee.

  “Teddy’s in jail,” I told him.

  He let out a soft grunt. “Teddy’s an idiot.”

  “He incinerated Pete Westcamp’s bees. Doused them with some kind of chemical and set them on fire.”

  Renfrew shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like Teddy. Maybe if he had hugged them to death.” He laughed. “Or if he had set light to me instead.”

  “Do you know anything about it?”

  Renfrew let out a deep sigh. “I know Teddy has a track record of big, messy, stupid mistakes. And usually they end up biting me in the ass.” He gave me a sour look. “I try to take precautions.”

  “I think he might have been set up.”

  “By whom?”

  “By the people he thought he was working with. They left him stranded at the scene. And someone tipped off the police.”

  He looked thoughtful and maybe concerned for a moment. Then he held up his hand and pointed out at the water. The sun was just appearing over the horizon, a thin sliver of molten orange under a thickening blanket of clouds.

  We watched for a moment. Then he slurped his coffee loudly and I wondered if he was doing it intentionally, just to spite me. “Doesn’t look like you’re in for much of a show this morning.”

  His phone buzzed and he sighed in annoyance, but looked puzzled when he read the display. “Sorry, I have to take this,” he said distantly, putting the phone to his ear. “What is it?” His voice sounded like he wanted to snap but was withholding judgment. He listened for a few seconds, a deep furrow creasing his brow. Then he stood and turned away from me.

  “Well, you must be wrong about that,” he said, a hint of nervous laughter in his voice. Then his tone hardened. “That can’t be. You heard what they said yesterday. They can’t … What do you mean they can?”

  Renfrew turned to look out over the water, his eye beginning to twitch. When I followed his gaze, I saw Pearce’s yacht, the lights seeming suddenly brighter as the dark clouds swallowed up the rising sun. Together we watched as a small cluster of the lights rose away from the others. Pearce’s helicopter was lifting off.

  “This is bullshit, Stan,” Renfrew said, his voice defiant but thin. “They made a goddamned commitment. They can’t fuck us like that.”

  As the helicopter rose into the air, the sound of its rotors made its way across the water, that same deep whump, whump, whump I could feel in my chest.

  Renfrew got to his feet, his eyes blazing. “No! No … Bullshit, Stan. You tell them—” His voice trailed off as he listened to what Stan was saying. The anger in his eyes was doused with fear. “No,” he said quietly, almost pleadingly, one hand wrapped across his forehead.

  The helicopter was flying straight at us. Without a word, Renfrew turned and walked back toward the house, away from me. He looked over his shoulder, but he was oblivious to my presence. His eyes were on the helicopter, his feet quickening like he was scurrying to get inside before it reached us.

  It was coming in fast, the rotors losing their low punch but growing louder and louder all the same. The breeze picked up as the helicopter banked low, right overhead, as if I could feel the wind from its rotors. Then it was gone.

  As Renfrew went inside, I heard him saying, “Well … what am I going to do now?”

  44

  I was faced with the same question myself. Coffee was the first order, since that’s just how it is. I stopped at a place called the Art Cliff Diner. They seemed to be doing a good breakfast trade, and the business smelled justified, but breakfast had to wait. Coffee wa
s like that sometimes.

  I took my coffee back to the Jeep and got out my phone.

  I needed to call Nola, Moose, and Annalisa. Moose was the least urgent, but the only one where I knew where I stood. I was about to call Nola, but then a call came in from Annalisa.

  “Doyle!” she said, scolding but relieved, her voice oddly hushed. “I was so worried about you. Are you okay? Why didn’t you call?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Just tell me, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but it was a long night—”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m glad you’re okay. I can’t really talk. I’m at work.”

  I looked at my watch. “It’s quarter after six.”

  “I know. I came in early.” Her voice sounded tight, and she took a deep breath and let it out. “I need to talk to you. Can you meet me for lunch?”

  “Sure. Are you okay?”

  “How about noon. Do you know the Oceanview?”

  “Okay, great, I’ll—”

  “I’ll see you there.” Then she was gone.

  I sat there staring at the phone for a moment, wondering what was going on. She sounded stressed, but not frightened. I thought about going over to her lab, but I knew she wanted to talk far away from there.

  I let a few more seconds tick by. Then I called Nola.

  “Doyle?” she said tentatively.

  “Yeah.”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “Sorry. I was going to call but we got finished pretty late last night. Plus, I figured you already knew what happened, since Teddy called you and all.”

  “Yes, I was surprised by his call as well … and to be hearing what happened from him, instead of from you.”

  “I was surprised by that, too.”

  “Look, we should talk. Things are crazy here right now. They were already crazy, but now I’m in charge until Teddy gets back.”

  “Why are you in charge?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, you’re the new girl, and…”

  “Because, Doyle,” she said, a little testy, “I’m the only one with a masters in horticulture and the only one who had run a farm of their own.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “I’m taking a break at noon for lunch. Can we meet then and talk in person?”