CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
SUSAN AND I put Angelica and Vinny in the car to take them to the hospital, and Nick decided he wanted to come along too, so I was relegated to the back seat to make room for his long legs. Then, before I could close the car door, Effie slipped onto my lap, leaving only Doc and Neddy Ives to guard the house. I tried to protest over the sound of Angelica’s wailing, but it seemed the journey would be a family affair.
Dark thoughts swirled as I watched the trees roll by. Effie turned and looked at me, seemed to sense my trepidation, and hugged my head to her chest briefly. It was an unusual gesture for her, and I should have felt comforted. But I took it to mean she knew that I blamed myself for all this. As we pulled into the hospital, I worked my phone out of my pocket and texted Marni.
Call me immediately.
We waited in the emergency room for two hours, no one speaking, the television playing a documentary about sharks. I watched the big, beautiful animals gliding through the depthless blue and felt a hunger for Cline’s blood shimmering through me. By midnight I had resorted to reading pamphlets about Zika virus to distract myself from violent thoughts.
I turned when Sheriff Spears walked through the automatic doors. He was stunned by the sight of us all. I hardly noticed the gurney behind him, the bundle of white sheets that three paramedics took straight into the emergency room.
“Clay.” I went to him, Nick at my side. “You heard about the house? Did Doc Simeon call you?”
A strange stiffness had come into Clay’s face. It was an expression I had seen plenty of times in my career, emotion barely held in check, a jaw locked, trapping fury or sadness inside. He glanced at the others, then took my arm and led Nick and me outside into the freezing night.
We huddled under the blazing red emergency sign.
He didn’t beat around the bush. Cops never do.
“I’m sorry, Bill.” Clay eased the words out carefully. “Marni’s dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I COULDN’T LOOK at Clay, at the truth of it burning in his eyes. I turned and put my hands on the wall, pressed my forehead against the cold bricks. Some deep, dark corner of my mind knew that this was exactly where I had been standing when they told me Siobhan hadn’t made it. I’d been drenched in sweat, having driven like a madman to the hospital after receiving the call. My legs were shaking now as I tried to focus on the mist of my breath in the light of the illuminated sign.
It was Nick who asked the questions I couldn’t bear to.
“Mitchell Cline had a big party at his place tonight,” Clay said quietly. “Hundreds of people there. Marni was last seen alive hanging around the pool area. The party spilled out into the street and the beach and the woods behind the house. They found Marni in the woods about a half an hour ago, unresponsive. The paramedics are calling it an overdose.”
“Where’s Cline? Have you arrested him?” Nick asked.
“We have no—”
“Tell me you’ve arrested him!” Nick barked.
“There’s no reason to.” Clay sighed. “We have no cause. There were hundreds of people at that party, and anyone could have given Marni whatever it is she took. It could have happened on or off Cline’s property, we can’t confirm anything at this stage. If we—”
Nick punched the neon sign beside my head, shattering the fiberglass and splintering the light inside, darkening the first E in Emergency. I didn’t intervene when he grabbed the steel casing of the letter and ripped it off the wall, taking the M with it, and smashed the letters into the pavement. I could barely breathe but I managed to get out some words as Nick stormed off toward the end of the lot, pushing over anything that wasn’t bolted down.
“Didn’t they try?” I asked.
“They tried,” Clay said. “But she was cold when the party-goers found her. Someone started CPR then and the medics carried it on.”
Clay put a hand on my shoulder. It was like he wasn’t touching me at all. The weight and warmth of it had no effect. I stood in the cold and tried not to scream.
“Bill,” Clay said. “We’re going to find out what happened. I’ll chase down everyone at that party and get all their photos. My team and I will talk to witnesses. I’m going to do everything I can do to make this right.”
“Yeah,” I said, frightened by the sudden evil intent in my own voice. “So am I.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE MIND SHUTS down in these situations and the body does what it can to maintain calm. I followed impulses that came from nowhere, getting a cab home from the hospital, walking into the house without talking to anyone, climbing the stairs to Marni’s room. The cluttered space smelled like her, the way everything seemed to smell of Siobhan after she’d been lost to me. I lay down on the floor on the fluffy pink rug and let the hateful thoughts rage.
I had done this.
The circle had closed. I had stood in the very same spot at the very same hospital where a man had told me that another woman in my care had died in the woods.
Between the internal blows I threw at myself, I had visions of Cline, his throat in my hands. I listened to the house fill with people, all talking and crying. The air was full of questions that had no answers. How had this happened? Why had she gone to the party when she’d said she’d be home? When had she been invited? Who invited her?
As the pale light of approaching morning lit the window above the bed, the house fell into sudden silence, everyone exhausted and numb with grief. I realized I was succumbing to sleep when the sound of a door opening nearby snapped me awake. As I sat up on the floor, the door to Marni’s room opened. A man I didn’t recognize stood there looking at me. Neddy Ives was as Siobhan had described him, tall and long-faced, a kind of grayness to his skin from his days inside that gave him the air of a figure in a faded photograph. He glanced down the hall as though to make sure we were alone and then took Marni’s violin from the stand and weighed it in his big hands.
“Did she suffer?” he asked.
I climbed onto the bed and sat on the edge, my body like lead. I supposed Ned had learned of Marni’s end from the house itself, the voices downstairs climbing through the walls, the vents. I wiped my face, which was hot and damp with tears.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what happened. I … Clay’s told me some stuff, but I don’t think I can believe it right now.”
Neddy put the violin down and patted the top as though to tell the instrument to stay in place. He nodded and turned to leave.
“Don’t bring any more music makers into the house, please,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “I don’t want to forget what she sounded like.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A DAY CAME and went. I lay on Marni’s bed, facing the wall, unable to move. People tried to talk to me. At some point Susan and Angelica sat down next to me and cried together. I handled things from the pillow, my head too heavy to lift, the phone ringing sometimes with questions I couldn’t answer.
When Marni’s mother called, we talked in low voices, both our throats husky with grief. It seemed a friend of Marni’s from her high-school days had invited her to the party. Francis Whitman, known about town as Squid. There were no signs of sexual assault on Marni’s body, but her lipstick was smeared, and she’d been found without the tights she’d been wearing under her skirt in photographs sourced from the party. The cause of death was thought to be respiratory failure consistent with an overdose, but there would need to be a toxicology screen, an autopsy. Marni’s mother didn’t want me to go and see her. She had, and she said Marni looked small and cold and tired.
At midnight, hearing Clay’s lumbering footsteps on the porch, I got up and walked downstairs. Everyone was gathered in the living room. I sat on the arm of a couch near Nick, whose face was ashen with anger. As I settled in, I heard floorboards creaking outside the door of the living room. Neddy Ives must have been listening in.
Clay eased himself down into an armchair, put his hat on hi
s lap, and ran his hands through his greasy hair. I wondered how long it had been since he’d sat down.
“It’s as you’d expect,” he said. “No one admitted to giving Marni anything or seeing her take anything. She was seen in the company of Mitchell Cline, the owner of the house, but she conversed and associated with a great number of people. I’m going to do another round of interviews in the morning. But so far I haven’t dug up anything we can use to press charges.”
“Was she high? Do we know for sure she took something?” Susan asked.
“There will be a full autopsy, but according to the tox screen, she had narcotics in her system. A lot of them.”
Nick got up and left the room. Everyone watched him go.
“Marni wouldn’t have done this.” Angelica wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. “She was a good kid. Our little baby of the house. We all looked out for her, and nobody’s seen her do anything really bad, right?” She looked around. No one met her gaze. “Yes, she got up to some mischief. But nothing like this.”
“My mother thought I was only getting up to mischief when I was a kid,” Vinny said. He seemed to fall into his memories, his eyes darkening; he turned away. His words seemed to break something in Angelica.
“What are we going to do for Christmas?” Angelica cried. “Marni loves Christmas.”
She hid her face and sobbed. It seemed to me that she felt silly for making the comment, but she shouldn’t have. We were all going to have to face the things that Marni loved but without Marni around in the coming months and years. Effie, in the darkest corner of the room, rubbed her nose on the back of her hand and shielded her eyes.
“Surely you can bring Cline in for questioning,” Susan said. “He owns two Escalades. One was spotted at the house during the drive-by.”
“He had an alibi.” Clay sighed. “All I can do is ask him to come sit for an interview and submit his vehicles for forensic testing voluntarily. Until I have more, my hands are tied.”
Silence passed over us. I cleared my throat.
“New house rules,” I said. Everyone turned to me. “No one stays here alone. I want the curtains drawn morning and night and all the cars parked at the back. We don’t want to make it obvious who’s here and who isn’t. Until this is over, we’ve got to take care of each other.”
I stood, trying to think of something to tell my people about the loss of Marni that would help them in their hour of pain and confusion. But all I could see around me were the memories that tied them to our lost girl. I remembered Vinny sitting in the morning sun telling Marni about champion boxers from New York in the fifties. Marni and Clay watching Red Sox games together, eyes locked on the screen, munching cheese balls and swearing under their breath. Marni shaking the ladder jokingly as Effie climbed up to clear leaves from the roof gutters.
“I can’t bring her back,” I told them all. “All we can do right now is try to weather the storm. This is our house. We need to be ready if he comes at us again.”
There was a ripple of something in the room, fear or sadness, maybe. I heard the truth in my own voice, and I think they did too. I beckoned Effie from the dark corner, planning to take her to Nick so we could strategize.
In the hallway, Clay stopped me. “I need to talk to you,” he said. Effie left us together, and the big man turned his hat in his hands. “I know what you’re going to do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I PUSHED THE door to the living room closed behind me. Clay looked exhausted in the light from the stairwell. In the tight space I could smell him; he’d spent forty-eight hours pounding the pavement, running down useless leads.
“I don’t know what you think my plan is,” I said, “because I haven’t fully formed it yet.”
“That’s why I want you to listen to me now.” Clay pointed a finger at my chest. “I know what kind of man you are, Bill. After what happened in Boston—”
“What do you mean, you know what kind of man I am?” I squared my shoulders and looked at my friend. Clay sighed. He had probably heard a version of what had happened to me in Boston from other cops. That version probably had all the major details correct, and I knew, even before he went on, what he was going to say.
“You’re a man who wants justice whether it’s inside or outside the law,” Clay said. He filled his chest with air and immediately seemed inches taller. “Well, I love the law. It’s why I do my job. I think it’s … it’s beautiful. And yes, sometimes it actually prevents people from getting what you think they probably deserve. But that’s the system. It’s all part of something bigger. And it’s my job to protect it. I don’t care if I have to find somewhere else to live. I’ll make you uphold the law if I have to.”
“You said you wanted me to put people’s heads in vises if I felt the need. Those were your words.”
“Maybe in Boston it’s literal, but up here, it’s a figure of speech,” Clay said.
“Mitchell Cline deserves to be dragged from the back of a crab boat,” I said. “The law and the beautiful system isn’t going to give us that.”
“I know.” He put his hands up. “But it’ll give us something if we’re patient and careful enough.”
“I don’t have any patience right now.” I waved my hand. “Marni is dead. She’s dead. Do you understand that? Do you feel it yet?”
“Of course I do. You’re upset,” he said. His voice was gravelly with emotion. “I am too. Everyone is. She was our little baby in the house, like Ange said. It’s too quiet without her.” The silence, like a fog, fell around us. Clay looked toward the stairs as though he thought he’d see her rushing down the steps to the front door. “But don’t let the anger drive you to do something stupid.”
“Whatever I do, it won’t be stupid,” I said. I turned to go, but his voice followed me.
“Don’t stray outside the lines again, Bill,” he said. “You know what happened last time.”
CHAPTER FORTY
SQUID WAS SCARED of Dogtown.
It wasn’t often that he acknowledged his fear. Living and working with Mitchell Cline had burned his nerves down to nothing, so terror was something abstract. He had enough difficulty just feeling the regular everyday emotions, and fear was an effort. Maybe the numbness had started earlier than Cline, under his father’s fists or in the rattling cell-blocks of juvie. Squid didn’t know. He hadn’t been forced to see a shrink in a long time, and anyway, he always lied to them.
But on his bike, pedaling through the dark woods of Dogtown, he felt the old familiar tingle of something like fear. The forest north of Gloucester was so dense, the morning light barely penetrated it. There were legends about this place, stories he’d heard from the locals of witches and ghosts and shit. There were weird rocks carved with words that appeared from between the trees like messages from someplace else, somewhere scary. He passed one that said USE YOUR HEAD, the letters green with moss. It made him think of the Druly woman, the sick, wet sound of the saw going through her spinal column as Turner heaved the tool back and forth. He swallowed hard, tried to shake off the feeling that someone was watching him as he rode. When Squid told Cline he didn’t want to do the drop-offs out here anymore, the man had laughed and increased the number of people on his route.
Squid looked over his shoulder at the winding road. Nothing.
In the distance he spied safety. The double-wide trailer that served as a makeshift bar in the evenings sat nestled in the trees. Squid had passed this place a couple of days earlier in the car with Cline and the others, everyone in the vehicle silent with the weight of their dark mission. Vermonte, the bar owner, would be pissed they’d dumped the Druly woman’s body out here, would probably bitch about it. But Squid wouldn’t pass on the dissent to Cline. Cline’s people looked out for one another, didn’t snitch. They all knew the man’s mood could turn on a dime.
Squid looked back, thinking he’d heard a car. Nothing again. His chest felt tight. There’d been what felt like a rock lodged in his throat since Cline had
come to him the morning before and asked him to text Marni, a girl he’d known from school. The rock had grown as the ambulances and squad cars arrived at the house and people left the party and fled into the woods and surrounding streets. As he did with his fear, Squid pushed thoughts of Marni down. They would go away eventually. Nerves frayed. Emotions burned. There was no such thing as witches and no room in his life for guilt. He was a soldier who’d done what he’d been directed to do.
The car came out of nowhere, veering out of the oncoming lane and heading right for him. Squid jerked the handlebars and hit the slope on the side of the road at an odd angle. They seemed to be on him before he had even stopped skidding and rolling on the dirt and pine needles; they grabbed his wrists and shoved his face in the earth.
He thought it was cops until the hood came down over his head.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE PLAN ROLLED out almost naturally, as though it was our only available course of action. Kidnapping. Violence. I stood in the tiny, abandoned house in the dusty darkness created by the boarded-up windows and looked at the boy in the chair as Effie secured his wrists and ankles with duct tape. Nick, Effie, and I had come together in the forest in the early hours of the morning; it was as though we felt our plan would stain the house if we were to build it within its walls. Later that morning we had tailed Squid as he left Cline’s house for a drug run into Dogtown. He had been a pitiful kidnapping victim, his body nothing but bone and taut sinewy muscle, as easy to pin and bind and pick up as a struggling lamb. From the old student ID I found in his wallet, I learned he was sixteen. He had cried nonstop from the moment we grabbed him to this moment, and now he sat hooded, waiting to know his fate.
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