by Paul Doiron
I hadn’t heard Nat Pillsbury’s truck, but there he was, standing in the doorway. Despite the chill in the wet air, he wore no jacket, just his usual Henley, tight jeans, and XtraTuf boots. His unshaven chin showed white hairs not yet in evidence in his black mustache. I had expected him to look more tired, but he seemed alert and energized—wired, almost.
“Checking on Hiram,” I said.
“I heard you and Ariel helped save his life. I guess I should thank you for that.”
Technically that was not an expression of gratitude, but I let it go. “Where did you disappear to last night?”
“I went ashore to pick up my wife. Your buddies in the state police worked her over pretty hard. They were lucky I wasn’t there at the time.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t exactly the third degree.”
His brow lowered. “Are you calling Jenny a liar?”
I ignored the schoolyard provocation. “You don’t have a problem taking your boat out at night in the fog?”
“I’m a Maquoit native” was the extent of his answer.
“So Jenny and your baby are home safe and sound?”
“As if you care.”
“It’s interesting how protective you are of a woman you were preparing to leave a few days ago.”
“Fuck you, man. I don’t care if you are law enforcement. You don’t have the right to trash-talk my family.”
“Actually, I was trash-talking you.”
I half expected Pillsbury to fly across the room at me with both fists. Somehow he mastered his violent impulses. “What were you talking to Hiram about?”
If this was my last morning on Maquoit, there was no point in hiding my cards. Time to play them.
“All I’m prepared to say is he provided me with a missing puzzle piece.”
“What puzzle piece?”
I pretended to check my watch. “I have somewhere I need to be. Do you mind stepping aside?”
The muscle-bound lobsterman held his ground.
“Really?” I said. “That’s the way you want this to go?”
He moved about a foot to his left. It didn’t afford me much room to pass, and he made sure to bump my shoulder.
I heard him call, “Hiram Reed is a better man than you’ll ever be.”
39
The windows of Graffam’s Store were all steamed up from the number of people packed into that already cramped space. Half the island, it seemed, had gotten up early to gossip about Hiram Reed’s overdose.
The conversation stopped dead as soon as I stepped through the door. The breakfast club occupied its usual table, minus Harmon. It surprised me that the harbormaster wasn’t going about his normal routine. He seemed like the kind of tough guy who would pretend nothing had happened, if only to prevent his neighbors from whispering behind his back.
Just as surprising was the sight of Jenny Pillsbury behind the cash register. It was my understanding that she worked only one morning a week. After a late-night crossing, her presence was unexpected and therefore noteworthy.
Sam Graffam and Andy Radcliffe were huddled near the range top while the store owner fried his eggs, fish, and potatoes for breakfast orders.
“Heard what happened to Hiram last night,” said Chum McNulty. “Is he going to pull through?”
“I suspect he is.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised it happened,” the old salt said. “He’s been lurching around like a zombie lately. Hasn’t been in here for coffee in ages.”
I made my way to the counter, where Jenny Pillsbury fought back a yawn. On the floor behind her was a baby car seat with her infant, Ava, sleeping under a mound of blankets.
“Thank you for what you did for Hiram,” the tall woman said. Unlike her husband, she appeared exhausted. “He’s a sweet man. I know you don’t believe that. If he had died last night, a lot of us would have been heartbroken.”
“He has a long recovery ahead of him—if he even wants it.”
She paused to process my words, then said, “Would you like some breakfast? It’s on me for what you did.”
“I’ll have the fish hash. But I’m required to pay for myself. Thank you for the offer though.”
She passed the order to Graffam, who was dressed as he had been the day before except that his new T-shirt said MAY CONTAIN ALCOHOL. Sam seemed to be one of those perpetually overheated men who wear cargo shorts all year long.
Radcliffe sneered at me as if I had tracked dog shit into the store. In his mind he was the aggrieved party. I ignored him.
“You had a long night, too,” I said to Jenny. “What time did you get back here?”
“Three a.m.”
“Nat told me the state police detectives were pretty rough with their questioning.”
“When did he tell you that?” she asked, but smart woman that she was, she had already figured it out. “You must have run into him at Hiram’s just now. Those cops were just doing their jobs. Besides, I have nothing to hide.”
“Beryl told me that when you were the teacher here, you had Kenneth Crowley as a student.”
“Why are you asking me about that?”
“It’s not unusual for teenage boys to have crushes on their pretty teachers.”
“You think, Kenneth—?” Her mouth snapped open and then closed like a sprung trap.
“Has he been in this morning?”
“No. Why?”
“Crowley blew up at Ariel Evans last night, blamed her for her sister’s death. I was there.”
Sam Graffam brought over a paper plate with my hash and a plastic spork. “That boy’s always had a hair-trigger temper.”
Andy Radcliffe couldn’t help himself now. “What’s that you’re saying about Kenneth Crowley?”
“I was telling Mrs. Pillsbury here about an excited utterance he made last night outside Hiram Reed’s house. It may have qualified as a spontaneous confession.”
“A confession to what?” the constable said.
“Having shot Miranda Evans.”
“That’s been settled. The boy found her body. You already cleared him!”
“I haven’t cleared anyone.” I put my money on the counter and turned to leave. “Tell Kenneth I’m looking for him.”
* * *
I wolfed down my greasy breakfast sitting behind the wheel of the Datsun.
Three minutes passed. Then Andrew Radcliffe came hurrying out of the store with his dog, Bella, trotting behind him, lame, barely able to keep up. He strode with purpose in the direction of Harmon Reed’s house.
I decided to give the constable a five-minute head start before I showed up at the harbormaster’s door.
I was still sitting there, drinking my coffee, self-satisfied in my mischief making, when Ariel Evans rode up on her bicycle. She propped the bike against the side of the moldering building and removed her laptop bag from the basket. I pushed open the door of my truck and sprinted down the road, calling her name.
She peered into the mist, unable to see who it was at first. When she recognized me, her face broke into a grin.
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought the time had come to begin meeting the islanders. I heard that this was the center of activity first thing in the morning.”
“You’re here to interview them?”
She heard the serrated edge in my tone. “No, I’m here to talk to them.”
“But you’re here for your story or your book or whatever you plan on writing. So you’ll actually be interviewing them.”
“That’s not how I do things, Mike. The people I interview know when they’re being interviewed. I consider myself a professional. I have certain standards. What’s with the hostility this morning? Are you still upset about that stupid rumor going around about us being—”
“I need to talk with you about something important. My truck’s over there.”
“I don’t make it a habit to get into vehicles with agitated men.”
I cocked my head. “Really?”<
br />
“That was a joke, or at least I thought it was. The truth is, you’re acting kind of strange.”
“Give me five minutes.”
She followed me to my truck.
When we were both inside, out of the weather, she said, “I need to find someone willing to rent me a golf cart. This island was definitely not made for biking, especially when you’re drunk or hungover.”
I pivoted toward her and rested my left forearm on the steering wheel. “You didn’t tell me you did an interview yesterday with NPR.”
“Is that why you’re so upset?”
“Partly.”
“I’m a journalist who happens to be at the center of the one of the weirdest stories in years. What did you expect me to do?”
“I heard that you described me as ‘not even a real detective.’”
She scrunched up her face. “Oh.”
“Thanks for that.”
“I knew it wasn’t coming out the way I intended. I was trying to explain that you’re not a homicide investigator. I was a little buzzed.”
“I was sent to Maquoit to investigate your sister’s homicide.”
“When it was thought to be a hunting accident.”
“Incident. Not accident.”
“I only meant that your job doesn’t include solving murders. And that’s the truth, isn’t it?” Her embarrassment had begun to crumble behind the weight of her self-righteousness. “If a case you’re investigating begins to look like it was a murder, you’re supposed to hand it over to the state police. That’s what you told me.”
I said nothing.
“I’m sorry, OK? I didn’t mean to put you in a bad light. But I won’t apologize for doing my job. You’re the only law enforcement officer on the island, but I’m the only journalist.”
Again I said nothing.
My silence seemed to be causing her physical discomfort. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Because you belittled me in a national interview. You’re smart enough to know that would damage me inside my department.”
Her face flushed. “You can accept my apology or not. That’s entirely up to you.”
“Mostly I’m disappointed, Ariel. I expected better of you.”
“You seem to be operating under the mistaken idea that we’re friends. You seem to be a good man, Mike. I’ve enjoyed hanging out with you. But if you’re not capable of finding my sister’s killer, then what good are you to me?”
Before I could recover from the body blow, she had gotten out of the truck.
Through the cracked windshield I watched her disappear into the store.
* * *
As I set off toward Harmon’s house, I tried to push Ariel out of my mind. But the thought of her was as stubborn as the woman herself.
She had wronged me. Every time I started feeling sorry for myself, I would only have to remember how she had betrayed my confidence. I would carry around that grievance like a polished stone in my pocket.
Technically, it was just past dawn. The sun had risen, but the only sign of its appearance was a change in the color of the fog. From deep charcoal it had become slate gray. As I passed the Trap House, the sky changed again, this time to the color of wet cement.
I nearly ran over Andy Radcliffe jogging toward me down the middle of the road. His hair was wild, his face was aglow.
“Harmon is gone!” he bleated through my window.
“What do you mean, he’s gone?”
“His truck isn’t at his house, and it wasn’t down at the waterfront either.”
The cause of Radcliffe’s panic confused me until I remembered how furious the old man had been the night before. If he wasn’t at Graffam’s and he wasn’t at his son’s bedside.…
He’d gone after the Washburns, of course.
Harmon blamed Eli and Rudyard for selling his son the drugs that had nearly killed him. But this insult was only the latest in a series of blows their families had traded over the years. On this tiny, claustrophobic island there was only ever one conflict, and that was the feud between the Reeds and the Washburns.
“Get in,” I told Radcliffe.
I swung the pickup around, nearly toppling a split-rail fence that ran along the edge of some summer person’s yard, backed up until we were pointed east, and hit the gas.
“Which way do I go?”
“There’s only the one road out to Dennettsville. Drive back to the airstrip, cross the helipad, and keep going.”
“What do you think Harmon is planning to do?”
Radcliffe seemed dismayed by our sudden velocity. “I can’t imagine.”
“Try.”
“Sink their boats, burn their houses.”
“Or he might just kill them.”
“Or he might just kill them,” the constable agreed.
40
This was my first visit to the eastern side of the island, and the change in the topography became apparent within five minutes of crossing the airfield. Through the gaps in the fog, I caught a glimpse of hayfields rolling down to the marsh. Seconds later we were climbing a hill lined with mud-splashed alders that the deer had ravaged and thorny barberries that had resisted their desperate attempts at eating.
Suddenly, we were in a forest.
Tall spruces surrounded us and blocked even the faint light filtering through the dripping boughs. The trees were so densely crowded, and there were so many deadfalls and blowdowns, that even the creeping mist had trouble penetrating the understory. It was as if the earth had spun backward into night.
I flipped on my high beams in time to catch a doe slinking off between the spruces. The brighter light revealed a forest floor that was rust orange with fallen needles or green with luxuriant carpets of moss. Then we passed over a ridge and the road dropped as fast as it had climbed.
The fog thickened again as the trees fell away, and I had a sense, from the tang in the air, that we were again nearing the sea.
“I haven’t heard gunshots,” Radcliffe said. “That seems like a good sign.”
“Unless they’ve already murdered each other.”
From the mortified look on his face, it was clear that the constable didn’t appreciate my gallows humor.
Better to approach with caution, I decided. I cut the lights and shifted into neutral. Gravity pulled us softly down the incline.
“How far away are we from their houses?”
“Two hundred yards maybe. Eli and Rudyard live side by side along the cove.”
“Who else lives here?”
“Their nephews have places farther down the Reach. In Dennettsville itself there’s kind of a flophouse for their sternmen and the foreign workers who staff their summer businesses. The Washburns have a take-out stand and souvenir shop they open when the tourists are here. The trailhead out to Norse Rock abuts their property. There’s always lots of curiosity seekers who come out this way to see the Viking runes.”
“So Dennettsville isn’t even a real village?”
“It used to be until Eli and Rud’s grandfather drove the last of the Dennetts from the island.”
Even from inside the truck, I spotted fresh tire prints in the mud. Wardens make a professional study of identifying tracks of all sorts, and I recognized the jagged diamond pattern as belonging to Goodyear Wranglers. The make and model came as an option with the newer GMC Sierra Denalis.
Harmon Reed had driven into Dennettsville, but there was no sign of him having driven out.
“Can you grab my flashlight from the rucksack at your feet? It’s in the side pocket.… No, the other side.”
As quietly as possible, I opened and closed my door, but Radcliffe had to use his shoulder to get his dented door open. The loudness of the noise set my teeth on edge.
“I don’t suppose you’re armed?”
He tried to make a joke of it. “I’ve got my Leatherman.”
“What about a phone?”
“Yeah, but the reception here is always sketchy until yo
u climb up to Norse Rock or Foggy Head and find a sight line to the tower.” He checked the signal, then held up the luminous screen for me to see that we were, once again, disconnected from the rest of the world. “When Harmon was road commissioner, he once said he was going to ‘accidentally’ knock down the telephone poles along here with his snowplow so Eli and Rudyard couldn’t use their landlines.”
I gave Radcliffe the keys to the Datsun, which he accepted as happily as if I’d dropped a wolf spider onto his hand. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “I’m going ahead. I need you to count to thirty and then start following me. Not too fast, though. Keep counting as you go and when you hit thirty again, pause and wait thirty seconds. Repeat that until you catch up with me or until you hear something that sounds like trouble.”
“What does trouble sound like?”
“Gunshots. Screaming.” I focused my full attention on those big, ingenuous eyes of his. “If it sounds like a pitched battle, you need to get the hell out of here, Andrew. Drive to the first place you get a signal and call the state police and tell them an officer is taking fire. They won’t be able to do anything to save me, but at least they’ll have an easier time solving my murder after my corpse ‘disappears.’ If I am wounded, I’ll try to signal by firing three shots spaced five seconds apart.”
“I could round up some folks and come back with a posse, so to speak.”
“Better to leave it to the professionals. There’s a boatload of cops headed out here this morning.”
“Really? I hadn’t heard.”
“I expect that was deliberate, Andrew. Do I have to tell you why?”
He bowed his curly head.
“You wouldn’t happen to know what kind of firearm Harmon might be carrying?”
“A revolver. I think it’s a .38 Special.”
“And the Washburns?”
“Oh, they’ve got a whole armory, from what I hear. The Washburns buy and sell all sorts of World War Two stuff.”
I glanced in the direction of the cove. “We’ve already wasted too much time here. Do you remember my instructions? I’m trusting you, Constable. This is your chance to make some things right.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he nodded his understanding.
